LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap..,..^._. Copyriglit ]So. 
Shelf_i//0[v 



UNJTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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ROSEMARY AND RUE. 



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Rosemary and Rue 



By Amber 




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Chicago and New York: 

Rand, McNally & Company, 

MDCCCXCVI. 



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Copyright, i8q6, by Rand, McNally & Co. 



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PREFACE. 



"Amber" was not to be classed with any 
society or any creed. In all respects she 
was an individual. In good-humored con- 
tempt she held all form, and with deep sin- 
cerity she revered all simple things. She 
smiled upon error and frowned upon pre- 
tense. Her life was largely made up of 
impulse and sacrifice. She was the con- 
stant "victim" of her own generosity, need- 
ing the money and the time which sympathy 
impelled her to give away. She was so 
devoted a lover of the moods of nature, 
noting so closely the changing of the leaf 
or a new note sounded by the whimsical 
wind, that her spirit itself must once have 
been an October day. Year after year she 
toiled, and her reward was not money, but a 
letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling 
of a heart that had been Hghtened, of a care 
that had been driven from the door. None of 
the newspaper writers of Chicago was more 



6 ^vi^fac^* 

popular. Another column told the news of 
the day; her column held the news of the 
heart. Her best thoughts and warmest 
fancies are scattered throughout her prose. 
Her verses are pleasant, and many of them 
are striking, but meter often chained her 
fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, 
poetic conceits in the guise of prose, will 
live long after the clasp, holding the preten- 
tious verses of a society laureate, shall have 
been eaten loose by the constant nibble of 
time. 

When a church was crowded with friends, 
come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a great 
thinker, a writer who knows the meaning 
of toil, said that she had succeeded by the 
force and the industry of her genius. And 
so she had. For others, influence searched 
out easy places, but "Amber" found her own 
hard place and maintained it, struggling 
alone. Her words were for the poor and 
the sorrowful, and they could but give a 
blessing. But in the end, a blessing from 
the poor may be brighter than the silver of 
the rich. Opie Read. 



Rosemary and Rue, 



I WONDER. 

I wonder, if I died to-night. 
And you should hear to-morrow. 

You'd mourn to think this one dear friend 
Had bid good-bye to sorrow. 

I wonder, if you saw a bird, 

The hunter's dart outflying, 
You'd lure it back with loving word 

To danger, pain, and dying. 

I wonder, if you saw a rose. 
Plucked quick in June's surrender. 

You'd wish it back upon the bough, 
To wither in November. 

I wonder, if you watched the moon. 
The tempest's rack outstripping. 

You'd grieve to see its silver prow 
In cloudless ether dipping. 

I wonder, if you heard a thrush 

Laugh out amid the clover, 
You'd weep because its cage door oped — 

Its captive days were over. 

I wonder, if, some happy day, 
When you have found your haven. 

You'll mourn to find this one dear friend 
Had been so long in heaven. 



^00etnavvi <»*ti* ^we< 



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When I die bury me by the sea. Let my 
first hundred years in the spirit be spent on 
a sunny sand-bank watching the sapphire 
tides break over a bluff of Hfted rocks. 
What is any earthly trouble but a dissolving 
dream, when one may bury the face in gold- 
en moss and sniff the salt spume of the sea! 
Over the blue verge of the horizon lies 
Spain, and I build its castles hourly here in 
my heart. A distant echo rings in my ears 
of trucks driven over stony streets, of the 
crack of the cabman's whip and the shout 
of profane teamsters, but the only semblance 
to cruel driver and jaded beast of burden 
seen in the seaside paradise of which I write 
is a fat huckster and a still fatter donkey 
who draws the large man where he (the 
donkey) listeth. Here on this lifted moor- 
land, if one wishes to go anywhere he rises 
up and goes forth on a carpet of crimson 
moss and yelfow grass and is driven by a 
chariot of untired winds. Behind us are 
miles of purple moss swept by ragged 
shreds of September fog, and musical, here 
and there, with bells of grazing herds ; while 
before us, behind us, and all around us 



stretches the boundless, unfathomable and 
mysterious sea. 



^ 



Did you ever hear of the island of Avilion? 
That enchanted place where "falls not hail, 
or rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," 
whose orchard lands and bowery hollows 
lie lapsed in summer seas? I found it one 
day when I was sailing on Casco bay in a 
boat hardly bigger than a peanut shell. Ten- 
nyson found it long ago in a dream, and 
to it he sent the good King Arthur that he 
might "heal him of his grievous wound" 
within the balm of its heavenly peace. But 
I found it in reality, and to it I took a care- 
worn lady and a work-weary brain, that I 
might perchance renew under its sunny 
spell a strength that was well-nigh spent. 
I found my island under another name, to 
be sure, but I rechristened it within the first 
hour of my landing. It is not the place, 
my dear, for featherheads and butterflies, 
this island of Avilion. It is not the place for 
the descendants of Flora McFlimsy to go 
with their new gowns and their French 
heels. All such would vote my little island 



10 Jto^^ntttru anb ^ttje* 

a bore, and run up a flag for the first in- 
land-bound steamer to put into port and 
carry them away. It has no ball-room, no 
promenade-hall under cover, no brass band, 
no merry-go-round, but instead it has 
meadow-lands that are brimful of bird 
songs; it has wild strawberries that bring 
their ruby wine to the very lips of the laugh- 
ing sea; it has such sunsets as visit the 
dreams of poets and the skies of Italy; it 
has great rocks that are woven all over with 
webs of wild convolvulus vine, whose airy 
goblets of pink and blue hold nectar for the 
booming bee to sip; and it has marguerite 
daisies by the tens of thousands, and wild 
roses that carry the tint of your baby's palm 
and the honey of sugar-sweet dew within 
the inclosure of their small curled cup. It 
is hardly bigger than a Cunarder, this little 
Chebeague island, whose name I changed to 
Avilion, and from wave-washed keel to flow- 
ery bowsprit the eye never lights upon a 
defilement or a stain. It is the only place 
in all my wanderings where I never found 
a peanut shell nor a tin can thrown out to 
defile nature's beauty. 

There was not a single bad odor on my 
island during the whole ten days of my tar- 



^o&exnavvi an^ ^xxe* 



11 



rying, and I am told by those who are old 
inhabitants that such a thing never was 
known to it. A soft wind is always blow- 
ing, but the only merchandise it carries is 
wild thyme perfume and the fragrant airs 
that waft from meadows-lands and old-fash- 
ioned gardens full of spice pinks and cinna- 
mon roses. Now and then a hunter's fog 
slips the leash of its viewless hounds and 
with noiseless "halloo" scours the island for 
the prey it tracks but seems never to corral. 
Now and then a sudden tumult seizes the 
tides that climb and fall on the shiny rocks 
and the air is full of the throb of soft drums 
and the music of flutes that are beat and 
blown a moment, then die away as quick- 
ly as they came, like a strolling band that 
marches through a village street, then over 
the hills and far away. Now and then a 
troop of crows rise silently from out the 
shadow of the pines and go sailing between 
the lazy eyes that follow and the sun, until, 
settling down upon some meadow stacked 
with new-cut hay, they break into clamorous 
laughter that taunts you with its shrill de- 
rision. Always, from dawn to dewfall, the 
world about little Chebeague is full of swal- 
lows that dart and soar and flit like shadows. 



12 ^xr^^ntartj antf Jlwe* 

They seldom sing, and yet the few notes 
they thread upon the air sparkle like dia- 
monds where they fall. Some strange bird, 
with a low, sleepy song like the crooning 
of a child that is half asleep, or like a shep- 
herd boy's pipe idly blown beneath the noon- 
day willows, is always haunting the groves 
of Avilion with an undiscovered presence. 
I have spent hours looking for him, yet nev- 
er found him. Sometimes I have been led 
to half believe the fellow exists only in the 
fancy of a spellbound idler like you and me. 

Just at sunset a little feathered violinist 
of the island whips out his fiddle and draws 
the bow so delicately across its vibrant 
strings, while the golden sun slips tran- 
quilly beneath the tinted waters of Casco 
bay, that the soul of the listener is fairly 
attenuated like a high C diminuendo with 
the spell of so much beauty. I don't know 
the name of the bird either, but he is going 
to sing for us all in heaven later on. Such 
performers do not end all here any more 
than Beethoven did. 

It was my custom during the time I spent 
at Little Chebeague to devote the entire day 
to strolling or lying at length upon the 
rocks — 



^0&etnavi^ antf |lw^* i3 

Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky; 
An emerald and an amethyst stone, 
Hung and hollowed for me alone. 

I grew to love the solitude with all my 
heart, and the thought of returning to the 
mainland with its jargon and its bustle was 
like the thought of tophet to the poor little 
peri for whom the gate of paradise had 
swung. Sometimes I would board the small 
boat that two or three times a day threads 
in and out of the blue water-way and visit 
adjacent islands hardly less beautiful than 
my chosen home. 

There is Long Island, far more beautiful 
by reason of its East End, where as yet the 
tide of a full-fledged summer resort has not 
come. There is an old-fashioned country 
roadhouse, such as we knew before the land- 
scape gardener and the boulevard fiend 
were turned loose upon our rural towns. To 
follow their windings is heaven enough for 
me. A fringe of buttercups to fence the 
way, thickets of underbrush to darken the 
near distance, constant little ups and downs 
where the road slips into hollow to follow 
the call of a romping brook or climb a hill 
to watch for the sea. Wintergreen berries 
and russet patches everywhere, and the 



14 ^oitetnavi^ anb ^ne. 

snow of blackberry bushes in bloom far as 
the eye can travel. 

"There is an old-time rail fence!" cried a 
visitor from the booming west one day; "my 
God, let me get out and touch it ! I haven't 
seen anything but barbed wire since I left 
New England !" And he did get out of the 
buckboard in which he was driving and 
chipped away a big brown fence sliver as a 
memento. These roads I am talking about 
lead nowhere in particular. They, as often 
as not, end in a fisherman's back dooryard, 
but they are sweet as a young girl's caprice 
while they last. 

One day we strolled across one of the 
islands and found a battlement of rocks on 
the seaside that it would have taken a solid 
month to explore. Oh, there was enough 
on the bar at ebb tide at Avilion to while 
away an age of idle time. 

Sometimes we took it into our heads to 
ride. Then the choice lay between Charlie 
the Christian — so named for his good be- 
havior and gentle ways — and the one road- 
ster the island produced, a nag in the rough, 
who held his head high and cavorted with 
the stride of a jamboreeing boy. 

The choice made, the hour must be 



watched to catch the low tide over to Big 
Chebeague, for there are no wagon roads in 
AviHon. Six hours of safety, as to the low 
water mark, is the limit of one day's riding, 
and much can be done in the way of riding 
in a half-dozen hours' time. A spin across 
the bar, the climbing of a rocky road, a sweep 
of seaward-facing pike, with dips into ferny 
hollows and ascents to pine-crowned bluffs, 
make the trip worth recording, and if to the 
exhilaration of the ride you add a dismount 
now and then to gather wintergreen and 
pick roses, with a loiter through a church- 
yard where many Hamiltons, both pre- 
Adamite and ante-historic, are sleeping the 
sleep of the just, you have the wliole mean- 
ing of an afternoon outing on Big Che- 
beague. 

Every evening after supper there was a 
pilgrimage to the west side of the island, 
not to be dispensed with by descendants of 
those remnant tribes that once worshiped 
the sun. Ranging from north to south as 
far as the eye can sweep, from westward, 
fronting little Chebeague, lies Casco bay, the 
loveliest bit of water in all the world. I say 
unhesitatingly the loveliest, because I do 
not believe that Naples, nor Sorrento, nor 



16 ^o&j^tnavt^ antf gluje* 

any far-famed Italian watering-place can 
match the coast of Maine for beauty. Into 
this bay, like petals from a wind-shaken 
blossom tree, are dropped hundreds of 
islands. Far to the west the White moun- 
tains melt upon the horizon in airy outline 
of blue, and over all each day is repeated 
the ancient miracle of the sun's decline. 
Sometimes a single cloud, like a tomb, re- 
ceives the bright embodiment of day and 
hides it from our sight behind such draperies 
as orient never wrought nor monarch 
dreamed. Sometimes this fair god lies at 
length upon a bier of purple porphyry, while 
flakes of crushed gems strew his couch with 
rainbow dust, and all the air is full of rose- 
red censers, edged with gold. Sometimes he 
drops below the verge, holding to the last 
a wine cup brimmed with sparkling vintage 
that spills and trickles down the hills. Some- 
times he returns in an afterglow, as the dead 
come back to us in dreams, the tenderer and 
the sweeter for their second coming. How- 
ever the sun may set in Avilion, each set- 
ting is the most beautiful and best to be 
desired. 



I heard someone bewailing the death of a 
friend the other day. The staff on which he 
had leaned, the bread which had ministered 
to his needs, the very light that had filled his 
eyes seemed caught away, and he mourned 
as one for whom there was no comfort pos- 
sible. I saw a mother leaning above an 
empty crib, whose dainty pillow no nestHng 
head should ever press again. I marked the 
terrible yet voiceless grief that ate at a be- 
reaved father's self-control, until no wind- 
blown reed was ever so shorn of self-reliant 
strength. I saw a wife whose love had sunk 
within the grave where her young husband 
was laid, as the sun sets within a cloud of 
stormy night. I saw an old man bow his 
snowy head because the faithful one whose 
hand had lain in his for more than fifty 
years had vanished from his sight forever. 
I heard a little child lamenting at bed-time 
the lullaby song which its dead mother's 
tender lips should never sing again. But 
sadder than all these things, more tragical 
than any death which merely picks the blos- 
som of life and bears it onward to heaven, 
as the gardener plucks the choicest rose to 
grace some festival of joy, is the scene when 
a trusted friendship dies ; when faith which 



18 ^Cf&j^tnavvi anb ilue* 

has endured the test of years gives up the 
breath of loyal life and sinks to hopeless 
unawakened death. Never think that you 
have shed your bitterest tears until you 
have stood at such a death-bed. Think not 
the measurement of any mortal grief has 
been found until you have sunk the plum- 
met-line of such a sorrow. That grave shall 
never burst its sheath to let the soul of 
friendship's betrayal free, like a lily on the 
Easter air. That door shall never swing 
like the bars of a cage to let a murdered 
faith flash forth like the plume of a singing 
bird to seek the stars. Over the grave of a 
dead and buried trust no resurrection-note 
can ever sound like a bugle-call across the 
dewy hills to rouse the sleeper from his 
couch. God pity all who linger by the 
heaped-up mound where love's forgotten 
dreams lie buried, and grant oblivion as 
the only surcease for their bitter sorrow. 



i$^ 



The days and nights swing equally upon 
the golden balance of time. The year is 
whitening with its crop of frost-blossoms 
from which no harvest-home has ever yet 



^o&!^tnavvi antf ilu^* 19 

been called. Like an unwritten page, the 
new year lies before us in untrodden fields 
of shining snow. God grant the footsteps 
of Death be not the first to track the un- 
broken path that lies before us. May joy 
and peace and love, like the roots of the 
violets under the snow, quicken and blos- 
som for all of us as the year advances, and 
may our progress be, like January's, right 
steadily onward unto June! 

As I write there is a sudden break in the 
hush of night, and faint and clear and sweet 
upon the listening ear falls the sound of 
"taps" from the camp in Fort Sheridan 
woods. I drop my pencil and listen to it, 
as I always do, with almost a spirit of rev- 
erent awe. The hard day's work is done, 
the time for rest has come, and over all the 
busy camp silence falls like the shadow of 
a brooding wing. The new moon, half hid- 
den by drifting clouds sends a rippling play 
of silver through the woodbine leaves, and 
from the top of the maple tree, a thrush 
dreams forth a bar of liquid music in its 
sleep. All the world is going to sleep, and 



20 ^0&etnav^ axxtf ^ue* 

God grant, say I, that when the time for the 
final good-night has come for you and for 
me the call for "taps," blown from some 
celestial bugle the other side the mystic gate 
may fall as sweetly upon our ears and find 
us as ready to sink to slumber. 

Did you ever hunt for eggs in a haymow? 
If you did you can remember just how, with 
bated breath, you crept through the fra- 
grant glooms of the old barn and searched 
the dusty place for nests. You can recall, 
perhaps, the shaft of sunlight that broke 
through the crevice of the door and showed 
you old speckle-top in her corner. You can 
hear again her furious cackle when you dis- 
lodged her from her nest and gathered the 
warm eggs she had hovered under her 
wings. You remember the excitement of 
the search and the perfection of content 
which settled within your soul as you gath- 
ered the basketful of milk-white eggs upon 
your arm and picked your way down +he 
steep ladder which led to the main floor and 
"all out doors." Scarcely any excitement 
or exhilaration of later years can compare 



with the joy of hen's-nest hunting when you 
were young. 

Did you ever go berrying? With a tin 
pail swinging from your wrist and your old- 
est gown upon your back, have you climbed 
the hill, jumped the fences and sought the 
side-hill pasture where the blackberries 
grew purple in the shade? Can you recall 
much, in all the years that thread between 
that happy time and this, which can trans- 
cend the pleasure of those wildwood tramps? 
Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a 
clump of bushes by the old rail fence. They 
are domed high with verdure and show 
dusky hollows underneath, where, my 
skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils fit for Bac- 
chus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, 
a snowy moth flutters out of the green dusk 
and wavers Hke a snowflake in the warm, 
sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away 
inside the fairy bower of crumpled leaf and 
twisted vine and draw it forth purple with 
the juice of overripe berries that dissolve at 
a touch. With these I fill my pail, and all 
too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, 
until twilight sends me home saturated with 
sunshine, late clover blooms and berry 
juice. 



32 ^00i^tnav7^ an^ ^w«* 

Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it 
lasted, but there is a more exciting quest 
than hunting eggs or finding berries, in 
which we all of us engage as the years of 
our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It 
is the search for happiness — a search we 
never give up nor grow too old to maintain. 
Forgetting the disappointments and the 
satieties of the dead years, we look forward 
to the new as the hidden nestfull of un- 
chipped shells of fresh experience and un- 
tried delights. God bless us all, and pros- 
per us to find the eggs and the berries before 
we die. Perhaps the service of love we do 
others shall prove the bush that bears the 
sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nest- 
full that shall develop the whitest store of all 
life's opportunities. 







A genuine mother could no more raise a 
bad boy into a bad man than a robin couFd 
raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" 
I mean something more than a mother who 
prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible 
texts, and sends him to Sunday-school. All 
those things are good and indispensable as 



^o^^maru anb ^w^* 23 

far as they go, but there is a lot more to do 
to train a boy besides praying with him, 
just as there are things necessary to the cul- 
tivation of a garden besides reading a man- 
ual. To succeed with roses and corn one 
must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To 
make a boy into a pure man, a mother must 
do more than pray. She must live with him 
in the sense of comrade and closest friend. 
She must stand by him in time of tempta- 
tion as the pilot sticks to the wheel when 
rapids are ahead. She must never desert 
him to go ofif to superintend outside duties 
any more than the engineer deserts his post 
and goes into th~e baggage car to read up 
on engineering, when his train is pounding 
across the country at forty miles an hour. 



A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD. 

Gay little Goldenhead lived within a town 
Full of busy bobolinks, flitting up and down, 
Pretty neighbor buttercups, cosy auntie clovers, 
And shy groups of daisies, all whispering like 
lovers. 

A town that was builded on the borders of a 
stream, 



24 ^o&mnavi^ an^ ^uje* 

By the loving hands of nature when she woke 

from winter's dream; 
Sunbeams for the workingmen taking turns with 

showers, 
Rearing fairy houses of fairy grass and flowers. 

Crowds of talking bumblebees, rushing up and 

down, 
Wily little brokers of this busy little town. 
Bearing bags of gold dust, always in a hurry, 
Fussy bits of gentlemen, full of fret and flurry. 

Gay little Goldenhead fair and fairer grew. 
Fed on flecks of sunshine, and sips of balmy dew. 
Swinging on her slender foot all the happy day, 
Chattering with bobolinks, gossips of the May. 

Underneath her lattice on starry summer eves. 
By and by a lover came, with his harp of leaves; 
Wooed and won the maiden, tender, sweet and 

shy. 
For a little cloud home he was building in the 

sky. 

And one breezy morning, on a steed of might. 
He bore his little Goldenhead out of mortal 

sight; 
But still her gentle spirit, a puff of airy down. 
Wanders through the mazes of that busy little 

town. 



Where shall we go to find the fit symbol 
of Easter? To the encyclopedia that we 



^C0etnavt^ anb glue* 25 

may post ourselves as to word derivations 
and root meanings? As well send a child 
to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose ! 
To fitly understand the true significance 
of Easter time, find some slope in early 
April that the sun has found a few short 
days before you. Lay your ear close to 
the ground that you may hear the fine, 
soft stir within the bosom of the warm 
earth. Note how the mold is filling with 
its new birth of flowers. There is not a 
covert in all the awakening woods that has 
not a little nestling head hidden behind the 
dead leaves. The breath of a sleeping child 
is not more peaceful than the sway of the 
wind flower upon its downy stem. The flush 
on a baby's cheek is not more delicate than 
the tint of each gossamer petal. To what 
shall we liken the grass blades already 
springing up along the loosened water 
ways? To fairy bowmen, led by Robin 
Hood's ghost through winding ways from 
forest on to the sparkling sea. To what 
shall we liken the violet buds spread 
thick beneath the country children's feet? 
To constant thoughts of God that bloom 
even in the grave's dark dust. To what 
shall we liken the twinkling leaves that shine 



26 ^o&etnavv^ anlCf ^rnc* 

in the dim depths of the woods? To lights 
at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into 
port. To what shall we liken the shy un- 
folding of the lilac buds? To the poise of 
a slender maiden who leans from out her 
lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To 
what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant 
gold? To the shining of a contented spirit 
with a humble home. To what shall we 
liken the brooding sky and the warmth of 
the all-loving sun? To the potency of a 
gentle nature intent on doing good, and 
the yearning of a tender heart to bless and 
save. Is there a nook so dark and forbid- 
ding that the beautiful Easter sunshine can- 
not enter and woo forth a flower? Is there 
a rock so impervious that the April wind 
may not find lodgment for a seed in some 
crevice, and there uplift a bannered blos- 
som? Is there a cold, resentful bank where- 
in the late snow lingers that shall not finally 
cast off its disdainful ice and flash into ver- 
dure in response to the patient shining of 
the sun? Is there a grave in all the land 
so new and desolate that Easter time cannot 
find a violet among its clods and paint a 
rainbow within the tears that rain above it? 
To nature's lovers, then, as to the truly 



^00!^tnavi^ ant> ilwje* 



27 



Christian heart, the significance of Easter is 
found in the reviving garden and in the 
awakening woods. It means resurrection 
after death, blossom time after the bareness 
of woe, the cuckoo's cry after the silence of 
songless days, and the smile of a pitying AH- 
Father after the orphan time of the soul's 
bereavement and seeming desertion. 

Another blessed thought to be gained in 
the contemplation of nature's sure awaken- 
ing from the long lethargy of her winter's 
sleep is that, however fearful we may be that 
death's reign shall be eternal, as constant 
as day dawn after midnight, or shining after 
storm, shall be the Easter of the soul. We 
do not need to pray for April; it comes. 
Nor do we need to pray for release from 
the first dark dominion of fear and dread 
when our beloved are snatched from our 
arms. Such experience is only the transient 
reign of winter in the heart, while yet the 
soft wing of April stirs upon the horizon's 
misty verge and the promise of violets is in 
the lingering darkness of the air. Remem- 
ber this : The same power that sends us No- 
vember is planning an April to follow, and 
out of the snowfall evolves the whiteness of 
the annunciation lily. 



28 ^00;entaraj anlCf ^w^* 

It has always seemed to me that, beauti- 
ful as Christ's birthday ought to be and 
full of tender significance as we may make 
the hallowed Christmas time, a deeper ten- 
derness attaches to these Easter days. The 
Sinless One had lived out the span of his 
mortal years; he had suffered and been be- 
trayed ; had struggled through Gethsemane, 
up to the thorn-crowned heights of Calvary, 
and yet, through all, carried the whiteness 
of a saintly soul, to cast its dying petals, 
like a white rose, wind-shaken yet yielding 
perfume even in death, in the utterance of 
that prayer for universal forgiveness, the 
most wonderful that ever ascended from 
earth to heaven — "Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do!" The song 
that ushered in the birthtime of those sanc- 
tified years was an invocation of peace and 
good will, beneath which the morning stars 
were shaken like banners before the oncom- 
ing of a glorious prince, but the prayer that 
ascended from Calvary was the plea of a 
betrayed and anguished soul for universal 
charity and forgiveness from God to man. 
Let us rejoice, then, when Christmas days 
bring gladness to our hearts and homes, but 
let us forgive and bless when Easter lays 



its stainless lily at our feet. There is con- 
stant need for charity and forgiveness in a 
world so full of self-blinded and ignorant 
evil-doers. They do not always know what 
they do, these rude and riotous betrayers 
of Christ; and all the more need, then, for 
.compassion, and that divine pity that, even 
from the cross, could invoke heaven's par- 
doning love. 

If you have a friend who has wronged 
you, forgive him to-day, for Christ's sweet 
sake. If you have a boy who has gone 
astray, reach out your arm and win him 
back, while yet the Easter violets glow upon 
the chancel rail. If you have a daughter 
who has been undutiful, take her in your 
arms and ask God to forgive you both— 
you for your lack of sympathy, as well as 
her for her waywardness. So shall you un- 
derstand the meaning of Easter, the resur- 
rection time of love, the fulfillment of its 
promise from out the icy negation of the 
grave. 

A few thoughts about death before we 
turn to other symbolizations of the season. 
It is all a mistake, it seems to me, to make 
death a menace and a dread in the minds 
of the young. Does the farmer go forth 



30 ^0&i^ntavvi antf ^u^* 

with tears to plant the seed for the com- 
ing harvest? Does the scientist mourn 
above the chrysaHs that lets a rare butterfly 
go free? Does the navigator rebel when a 
bark that has been tempest-tossed and 
storm-driven enters port? Teach the chil- 
dren that death is all that makes life endu- 
rable; that it is the sheaf of ripened wheat, 
or the budding flower, plucked from the 
earth's dark mold; that it is the flight of 
the bird, the home stretch of the yacht. 
We love each other, but what is it that makes 
human love any nobler than the chirruping 
of birds if not its duration? And it is only 
death that makes our loves immortal. Time 
enthrals them with fear and environs them 
with alarms ; death lifts them into the region 
of eternal joy. Take away the reality of our 
faith in the life to come and Easter would 
mean no more to us than it means to the 
browsing cattle that munch the violet buds 
and trample the bright promises of the year 
under foot. The comforting view of it all 
is, that here we are only learning to love. 
We are like birds that sit upon the edge of 
the nest, and flutter, and chirp, and dread 
to fly away. What shall the bough whereon 
our nest was rocked with many a storm be 



^00emavvi anb gluje* 3i 

when we have learned to spread these tire- 
some wings and rejoice in the blue space 
of the boundless air? The heroism of love, 
the faithfulness of love, the grandeur, pa- 
tience and magnificence of love shall only 
be revealed when the soul has left the shad- 
ows and spread its wing in the empyrean 
of heaven's blue. 



There is a small boy who lives at our 
house with whom I wage an unending war- 
fare on the subject of clean hands. The sun 
never goes down nor yet arises upon a har- 
monious adjustment of the mooted question. 
There are more tears shed, more dire 
threats made, more promises broken, more 
anguish endured on that one account than 
upon any other under the sun. 

The boy dwells under a ban as somber as 
the seven-fold curse of Rome. His sisters 
nag him, his grandmother prays for him, 
his mother pleads with him, his girl friends 
flout him, but in spite of all he continues to 
wear his hands in half tints. But the other 
evening he made an announcement that 
caused even the young person to remark: 



32 ^c&jetnav!^ anb ^w^* 

"Well, I'd rather see you with your soiled 
hands than see you such a dude as that!" 

"Gee !" said the boy, "but some of the kids 
that go to our school are queer ducks!'' 

"Don't use so much slang," cried his 
mother ; "why can't you call a boy a boy as 
well as a 'kid' and a 'duck;' and whatever do 
you mean by 'Gee?' " 

"They bring little cushions to school," 
continued the boy with only a swift hug in 
answer to his mother's question, "and they 
put 'em under their hands when they play 
marbles, so's they won't get their hands 
dirty. Gee whiz, but I'm glad I ain't such a 
fool!" 

And in spite of her desire to see him a bit 
more solicitous as to personal elegance his 
mother could but echo the boy's self-con- 
gratulatory remark. 

What on earth is going to become of us 
if this awful wave of efifeminacy which has 
struck the race does not soon subside? Ear- 
mufifs and galoshes, heated street cars in 
April and double windows up to rose time 
have done their best to make molly coddles 
out of men, but when we are starting a gen- 
eration of boys to play marbles with cush- 
ions to rest their hands on the sex had bet- 



^00«ntaru ctnlCf ^rne^ 33 

ter abolish hats and trousers and take to 
hoods and shoulder shawls. Give me a boy 
and not a pocket edition of an old woman. 
He need not be a tough nor a bully, nor need 
he be cruel nor untender because he is a boy, 
but I want him jolly and brave and up to 
every harmless prank that's going. I want 
him to use slang and wear muddy shoes, 
slam doors and make all sorts of futile feints 
at keeping his hands clean, provided, al- 
ways, he appreciates the opportunity offered 
to show the gentleman that's in him by never 
appearing at table looking like a tramp. 
Even that is better, though, than being a 
"sissy." Give him time and the untidiest 
boy in the world will develop into a gentle- 
man, but eternity itself could not evolve a 
man out of a boy who plays marbles with a 
cushion ! 



As I was walking down Dearborn street 
the other day, close upon the gloaming, I 
chanced to meet two pretty girls, not the 
only two in this big city, perhaps, but two 
of the fairest. One had hair like the tas- 
sel of ripe corn when the sunshine finds 



34 ^0&jctnfxvv[ anh JIm^* 

it; the other's head was crowned with 
dusky braids, and the eyes of the two were 
brimful of laughter as a goblet new-filled 
with wine. Surely such pretty girls should 
carry queenly hearts, thought I, and with 
my old trick of catching topics in the air, 
I loitered a little on my way to hear what 
such fair lips might be saying. Said one: 
"I really don't care to marry him; he is 
such a darned fool! but he will give me 
everything I want, and I suppose I shall." 
I stayed to hear no more. If I had caught 
a yellow-bird swearing, or seen the first 
robin appear in Joliet stripes, the revulsion 
from pleasure to disgust could not have 
been more sudden. Is this all the les- 
son the world has taught you, my pretty 
maiden? To soil your lips with slang and 
sell yourself for fine clothes and the chance 
of unlimited display! Forecasting the life 
of such a girl is like forecasting an April day 
that dawns in tints of purple and gold, and 
ends in tempest and the blackness of night. 
Beauty is a glorious heritage, indeed, but to 
see it worn by such types as you, my pretty 
dears, is like seeing a queen's crown on the 
head of a parrot, or a royal scepter in the 
grasp of a monkey. 



^0«:entctru anTCf ^u^» 35 



Niagara Falls! What heart is so stolid, 
what appreciative spirit so calloused over 
with the hard crust of stoicism not to rise 
and shout before the wonder of its magnifi- 
cence? When a man or woman gets so blase 
as to thrill no more over Niagara Falls, let 
them be salted down with last year's hams 
and hung on a hook in the quiet seclusion 
of a smokehouse. 

First we took our way over the bridge 
that leads to the beautifully kept Goat 
Island and, alighting from the carriage, 
stood for a time with the full splendor of 
the American fall in our faces. A fasci- 
nation that could not be shaken ofif held 
the eyes upon that never-stayed torrent of 
sun-illumined jewels. Diamonds they were, 
and great uncut emeralds, with here and 
there a rain of fiery rubies, that tumbled 
from ofif the lifted ledge of imperishable 
rock. And where the volume widened, un- 
til it became an avalanche of snowy foam, 
shot through and through with needles of 
light, it seemed to us that the law of gravi- 
tation had been forever abandoned, and fall- 



36 ^0&i^tnavvi anh Jluje* 

ing tons of water, losing kinship drop with 
drop, were floated skyward again to find a 
home in heaven. Down-shooting rockets of 
silver foam unfallen, yet always in the air! 
Canopies of cloud, dissolving into fine dust- 
like roadside pollen ! Draperies of spray un- 
rolled in noiseless splendor from the blue 
background of an endless day! Explosions 
in mid air of thunderous torrents that turned 
to carded wool on the way from heaven to 
earth! While I stood and watched it all 
somebody profaned the air with a vulgar 
word, and I looked for a flaming sword from 
the omnipotent hand to smite him where he 
stood. To swear, or even to think an un- 
holy thought in such a holy of holies, de- 
serves the penalty of death as much as did 
the desecration of the temple in ancient 
times. 

Shifting our place from point to point, we 
found ourselves at last standing on the very 
verge of the Horseshoe falls, where, crowned 
with living green, it slips over the crumbling 
ledge and loses itself in a dazzling whirl of 
spray. Although I have stood in that same 
spot many times I am proud to remark that 
I have never stood there yet without saying 
my prayers. The sight is too much for the 



puny ego that animates this little capricious 
whiff of dust we call our mortal body, and 
now, if never before, the soul that retains 
one particle of the divine within it turns to 
God as the sunflower follows the sun. 
While we stood entranced by the sublime 
beauty of the scene a mighty wind arose 
suddenly and great clouds were called 
across the sky to the sending of a swift 
alarm. Before the breath of the wind the 
mists were tumbled far and wide like 
feathers, and a rainbow that arched the 
whole was demolished into nothingness only 
to be kindled again as a flame in the whim- 
sical breath of the riotous air. One moment 
the atmosphere was a fairy flower garden, 
full of violets, roses, green feathery ferns 
and passion-tinted tulips brimming over 
with gold. The next some giant hand 
reached forth and plucked and bore each 
flower away. A suffusion of color followed 
every flood of sunshine, as a pomegranate 
runs with juice at the touch of a knife, only 
to be succeeded by pale wafts of colorless, 
interminable spray, where a cloud caught 
the too eager sun within its soft eclipse. 



^ 



38 ^O0etnavt^ antf ^me* 

If the Lord left any snakes in Paradise 
after the settlement of the primal fuss they 
took the shape of the man who is a confirmed 
cynic and pessimist. The man who has no 
faith, no enthusiasm, no candor, no senti- 
ment. The man who laughs at the mention 
of good in the world, or virtue in women, or 
honor among men. The man who calls his 
wife a fool because she teaches his little chil- 
dren to say their prayers, and curls his lip at 
any belief in the world beyond the grave. 
The man who never saw anything worth 
admiring in the sky when the dawn touches 
it, or the stars illumine it, or the clouds 
sweep it, or the rain folds it in gray mists of 
silence. The man who lives in this spark- 
ling, shining world as a frog lives in a pond 
or a toad in a cellar, only to croak and spit 
venom. The man who never saw anything 
in a rose aglint in the sunlight or in a lily 
asleep in the moonlight, but a species of 
useless vegetable, the inferior of the cabbage 
and the onion. The world is overfull of 
such men, and if I had the right sort of 
broom I'd sweep them away as the new girl 
(Sweeps spiders. 



^ 



^0&^tnavt^ ttn^ |lu:e* 39 

Once I was sailing in a yacht close to the 
rock-bound coast of Maine. 

It was presumably a pleasure cruise, but 
if ever a poor wretch in purgatory had a 
harder time of it I am sorry for him. 

The fog was thick, the ground swell was 
enough to unsettle the seven hills of Rome, 
and something was wrong with the boat's 
machinery, so that for hours we lay in the 
trough of the sea, making no headway and 
fearful that each moment would be our 
last. Added to all this there came at short 
intervals a demoniac blast from a fog horn 
which rent the air with the clamor of a thou- 
sand tongues. 

"Look out!" it seemed to shriek over and 
over again. "Look out, poor fragile wisps 
of gossamer! The hour strikes for your 
destruction. Another wave, a little higher 
than the last, shall suck you down like a 
shred of foam into the blackness of the sea's 
dark vortex. Brace up and meet your 
doom. Look out! Look out! Look out!" 

I listened to that fog horn for hours, until 
the soul within me lay like a spent bird 
weary with futile beating of useless wings, 
and I came within a hair's breadth of mad- 
ness. In fact, I think I had commenced to 



40 ^cintntavvi anl^ ^ne* 

rave a bit when a brisk wind sprang up that 
blew the fog away, the crew succeeded in 
righting the craft and onward we flew out 
of sound of the terrible fog horn forever. 

There are many things in life that remind 
me of fog horns ; there are many occasions 
that beat upon the soul with just such vo- 
ciferous clamor. 

There are those old-fashioned Bible texts, 
shouting "hell fire" and "eternal damnation." 
What are they but fog horns warning us 
from off a mist-enveloped shore? We can- 
not shut our ears to them while we lie a 
furlong ofif the rocks and listen to their 
woeful reiteration. Perhaps some chance 
wind may blow us out to sea, there to es- 
cape for the present the unwelcome climax ; 
but we know that underneath the shrouded 
stars and through the hush of midnight for- 
ever and forevermore sounds the crash of 
that brazen alarm. We may not heed it, 
but the fog horn is there, forget and disown 
it though we may. 

Then there are our birthdays after we 
grow old enough to understand their sig- 
nificance ; what are they but fog horns that 
sound at intervals to denote that we are 
drawing near to the final doom of all man- 
kind? 



^0&^ntavt^ ctntr ^u^* 41 

"Sport on," they seem to say, "a little 
longer ; weave your garlands and blow your 
pretty bubbles while you may, for to-mor- 
row you shall surely die!" 

Each year the fog horn blows a louder 
blast, until finally the softened haze of 
creeping years, like a white fog in the sea 
air, muffles the sound, and we sink to rest at 
last, some of us with the wild clamor hushed 
to the measure of a good-night song. 

Then the holidays. Thanksgivings and 
Christmases with independence days, like 
wine-red roses dropped between, what are 
they but fog horns on the invisible shores 
of memory? How they mock us with the 
recollection of vanished joys, and warn us 
of barren years yet to be. 

Gone forever are the dear ones who made 
gala times and festival happenings bright, 
and still we linger like boats in the trough 
of a sullen sea, our motive power wrecked, 
our sails rent, and listen, listen, listen to 
the warning that sounds from far ofif the 
hazy shore. 

"Gone, forever gone," the fog horn cries; 
"gone down into the sea, the boats that 
kept you company when the bright-winged 
fleet put out from port! Lost forever, in 



42 ^jor^jemar^ ttnljr ^u^* 

storms it seems scarce worth the while to 
have weathered, since here you toss, alone 
at last, like driftwood on the chilly tide, and 
listen forever to the mournful warning of 
my voice from ofif the sandbars, warning 
you that not even love can withstand the 
beat of time's relentless years." 

Our desks are full of miniature fog horns 
in the shape of unanswered letters. 

Our closets hang full of fog horns of 
varying fabrics. They warn us of the folly 
of trusting to bargain sales of shoddy goods ; 
they warn us against extravagant tastes 
when times are hard; they warn us against 
the lazy mood that neglects the stitch in 
time that saveth nine. 

Every time we are ill the occasion is a 
fog horn. 

Either we have disregarded some law of 
health and are in the trough of the sea in 
consequence, or we are flying on to the 
breakers with ears dulled to the fog horn^s 
din. 

We speak with cruel harshness to the old 
mother who loves us, or to the little child 
who trusts us. We are sorry for it after- 
ward, and that sorrow is the fog horn that 
warns us to keep ofif the reef of temper. 



"To-day may be the last day for the 
mother you have pained or the child you 
have wronged," it seems to say; "the bed 
they lie down upon to-night may be the bed 
of death. See to it, then, that you make 
each day of life, if possible, the last day 
of love's opportunity." Did you ever stop 
to think of what would become the instant 
concern of all this vast human race if a sud- 
den edict should go forth that only twenty- 
four hours were left for each man to live? 
What if an angel should appear to-day at 
sunset and proclaim in a voice that should 
reach from world's center to world's rim, 
"To-morrow at set of sun this globe and 
all its race of sentient life shall be folded 
up like a scroll and effaced from heaven's 
chart!" 

What would we all begin to do then, I 
wonder? I think that everything would be 
forgotten but love. Envy and hatred, covet- 
ousness, jealousy, ambition, selfishness and 
cruelty would find no place in the hearts of 
men. We would improve love's latest op- 
portunity to be kind one to another, tender- 
hearted and merciful. The husband would 
not be harsh with his wife, nor the wife 
show waspish temper to her husband, if the 



44 ^o&mnav'^ antf ^u^* 

last day had come for both. The father 
would not strike his boy in uncontrolled 
temper, nor the mother rebuke her careless 
child, if the knowledge that the end of love's 
opportunity lay between the uplifted hand 
and the culprit. We should all be loving 
and fond and sweet if we only knew. My 
dear, this very thought, carried out, is but 
another fog horn. Perhaps death is already 
near, and the brazen clamor in our hearts 
which takes shape of an uneasy con- 
science or of a nameless dread is but the 
warning in the fog that we are close upon 
the fatal reef. Ah, the air is full of them! 
They sound in every waking moment, they 
mingle with our dreams, they greet our 
opening eyes, they accompany us when the 
tired lids fall in -slumber. The shore is 
lined with them and their warning is as 
ceaseless as the beat of time's receding 
waves. 

But of what use is a fog horn to a vessel 
that gives no heed? Why uplift them on 
dangerous reefs if the ship's crew sleeps 
through their warning and the unconscious 
captain ignores their hoarse note of alarm? 

An unheeded fog horn might as well be 
silenced, and so, I sometimes think, if we 



allow our hearts to grow callous to the call 
that conscience makes, why not be thankful 
when the warning ceases and silence follows 
the useless repetition of an unavailing ap- 
peal? If I am to be shipwrecked at last I 
think I would rather run upon the reefs 
without warning than to drift to destruc- 
tion to the mocking cadence of an alarm I 
would not heed. To go down with the sound 
in my ears of an admonition that might have 
saved me had I but Hstened would be the 
hardest sort of dying. 



HER CRADLE. 

There are tears on the gentian's eyelids. 
As they lift them, fringed and fair. 

Do they mourn for the vanished brightness 
Of my baby's golden hair? 

There's a cloud a-droop in the heavens 
That shadows their sunny hue. 

Does it dream of the lovelight tender 
In my baby's eyes so blue? 

The golden rod pines in the forest. 

The aster pales by the brook. 
Do they miss her fairy footfall 

In each dim and flow'ry nook? 



46 ^0&!Ctnavvi anb ^rne* 

Now, all through this beautiful weather, 

Wherever I walk, I weep; 
For I think of the desolate cradle 

Where my baby lies asleep. 



The other night, as I was hstening to 
"taps" in a neighboring mihtary camp, a 
longing came over me for a silver bugle of 
my own, that I might blow a message to 
the drowsy world. We all listen to that fel- 
low up at Fort Sheridan, when he gives the 
command for "lights out!" just because he 
blows it through a bugle. He might come 
out and say what he had to say in tones 
anywhere between a cornet and a clap of 
thunder, and the efifect would be nothing to 
what it is when the notes filter through a 
silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the 
last strains of that nightly call linger on the 
ear ! They melt into the starry glooms, and 
throb through the dim spaces of the woods 
like golden bubbles or the wavering flight 
of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we 
think of Grant, asleep in his grave by the 
mighty river, of his work well done, and 
the rest that dropped upon his pain-racked 
life at last like a soft and rainy shadow on 



a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave 
men who fill soldiers' graves all over this 
blood-bought heritage of ours. We think of 
hearts that once beat high, for long years 
silent as stones to all our cries and tears. 
We think of a host of things, solemn and 
hushed, and sacred, and drop to sleep at 
last with an indistinct purpose in our hearts 
to so conduct ourselves that when the Death 
Angel blows "taps" for us, we shall leave 
a record behind us to be read through fond, 
regretful tears, and enshrined in golden 
characters upon the tablets of memory. 

Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, 
to work with, and if I could stand out under 
the stars on a hushed summer night and 
deliver my message through its silver throat, 
perhaps the world that reads me might be 
thrilled into earnest purpose more readily 
than it is when exhorted from a pencil point 
or a quill. The first message I should ring 
through that bugle of mine would be the 
command, "Don't fret!" However comfort- 
less and forlorn you may be, don't add to 
your own and the world's misery by fret- 
ting. There never yet was a sorrow that 
could not be lived down; there never yet 
was one that could be cured by worry. 



48 ^0&!^tnctvvi atib ^u^* 

When the cows get into the corn and the 
chickens into the flower-beds, the sensible 
man chases 'em out first, repairs the dam- 
age next, and, lastly, fastens up the break 
in the garden wall by which the marauders 
got in. What would you think of a farmer 
who went into his bedroom to pray before 
he chased out the cows, or of a woman who 
threw her apron over her head and wept 
long and loud because the hens were 
scratching up her pink roots, instead of 
"shooing" them a half-mile away with a 
broom? Most troubles come upon us as 
the cattle and the hens get into the corn and 
the garden patch, through a broken fence 
or a carelessly unguarded gate. It is our 
own fault half the time that we are tor- 
mented, and the sooner we repair the dam- 
age and mend the fence, the better. Time 
spent in useless bewailing, in worry and dis- 
quietude, is lost time, and while we wait the 
mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by 
one, as the handful of heroes met the host at 
Thermopylae, and you will slay them all; 
but allow them to marshal themselves on a 
broad field while you are crying over their 
coming or praying for deliverance, instead 
of arming yourselves to meet them, and they 



^O0ietnavyi anb ilu^* 49 

will make captives of you and keep you for- 
ever in the dungeon of tears. Is your hus- 
band too poor to buy you all the fine clothes 
you want, or to keep a carriage, or to sur- 
round you with pleasant society and con- 
genial friends? Very well, that is certainly 
too bad, but what's the use of being forever 
in the dumps about it? Get up and help him 
keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps 
you'll have a golden harvest yet A sullen, 
discontented wife is a millstone around any 
man's neck, and he may be thankful when 
the good Lord delivers him from her. What- 
soever is worth having in this world's gifts 
is worth working for, and wedlock is like an 
ox-team at the plow. If the of¥-ox won't 
pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with 
him upon the possible future of a comforta- 
ble stall and a full bin. Out upon you, then. 
Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and 
fret your days away because your husband 
is a poor man and spends most of his time 
chasing the cattle, calamity and failure out 
of his wheat patch. He may possibly be one 
of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in 
that case all the more reason you should not 
fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling, 
and smoking flax gentle tending, else they 

4 



50 ^xx0«ntaru anb ^ne* 

will perish on your hands and disappoint 
both you and heaven. All the more reason 
that you should be cheery and strong and 
ready to do your part, if the man you mar- 
ried, because you dearly loved him (remem- 
ber!) is unable to do all that he promised. 
That is, always provided he is weak and un- 
fortunate, rather than desperately wicked. 
A woman has no call to stand by any man 
if he is a wretch and shows no desire to be 
anything else. The Lord himself never 
helped a sinner until he showed some desire 
to be saved. Less repining, then, a little 
more forbearance with one another's short- 
comings, and a little more loyalty to the 
promise "for better or for worse," will ease 
up much of the burden of dissatisfied and 
disappointed wedlock. 

Another message that I should blow 
through that bugle, if I had it at my lips 
to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I 
should ring it out so long and loud, I think, 
that the moon would stop to listen, and the 
sleepy heads in every home in the land 
would rise from their pillows like night- 
capped crocuses out of the snow. For heav- 
en's sake, if you have a principle or a friend, 
be true to them. Make up your mind, 



^o^^marH ant> ^u^* 51 

whether or no your principle is solid and 
has God and justice on its side, and then be 
true to it right down to death, or, what is 
harder, through misunderstanding and ob- 
loquy. And if you have a friend, such as 
God sometimes gives a woman or a man, 
faithful through all betiding, staunch in 
your defense and tender in your blame, 
stand true to that friend until the grave's 
green canopy is spread between you. He 
may be unpopular and unfortunate, and all 
the feather-headed crew of society may ig- 
nore him, but if you have ever tested his 
worth as a friend, stand up for him, and 
stand by him forever. The sun may go 
down upon his fortunes, and calumny may 
cloud his name, and you may know in your 
heart that more than half the world says 
about him is true, but stand by the man 
who has once been your true friend. In- 
gratitude is the blackest crime that preys 
upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of 
a favor, or the effacement of a bond sealed 
with an obligation, is capable only to weak 
and cowardly natures. 

If you have a conviction, and are con- 
scientious in the belief that you are right, 
be true to your professions. If you are a 



62 ^0&^tnavvi atttf ^ue* 

rebel, be a rebel out and out, and don't be 
a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over 
the fence. Never apologize for either your 
faith or your profession, unless you have 
reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are 
ashamed of it, renounce it and get one that 
will need no apology. 

There are lots of other messages I would 
like to stand on a hill and blow through a 
bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit 
of further efifort just now; so we'll postpone 
the topic for another hearing. 



I sat in a fashionable church the other day 
and listened to a sermon on "The Prodigal 
Son." How often I have heard the same 
old story told in the same old way. How 
familiar I have become with the kind father, 
the bad son, refreshingly human heir, the 
veal and the ring! But the last time I 
heard the story I felt an almost uncontrol- 
lable impulse to rise up in meeting and ask 
the question, "How does the treatment ac- 
corded to the prodigal son match the treat- 
ment we mete out to the prodigal daugh- 
ter?" 



How far out of our way do we go to ac- 
company his sister on her homeward faring 
after a season spent among the swine and 
the husks? 

Do we put an i8-karat ring on her poor 
Httle soiled finger and place her at the head 
of our table, even if by good chance she 
gains an entrance to the home? Do we not 
more often meet her at the back door when 
nobody is looking, rush her through the 
hallway and consign her to the little third 
story rear room, taking her meals to her our- 
selves, on the sly, that the neighors may 
not find out the dreadful fact that she is at 
home again? 

"Keep yourself very close," we say to her, 
"and by no manner of means be seen at any 
of the windows, and you may stay here. 
You can wear some of your virtuous sis- 
ter's cast-ofif clothing, and sleep on the 
lounge in the nursery, where the servants 
never think of going since the little folks 
have grown up, but you must be very peni- 
tent, and very humble, and very thankful to 
God for the mercy you so little deserve." 

I think somebody had better write a new 
parable and call it "The Prodigal Daughter." 
Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it 
to touch the unmoved heart. 



54 ^0&!^tnavi^ attJCf ilu^* 

After all there are two sorts of prodigals 
— the prodigal who comes home because the 
cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes 
because his heart turns back to the old home 
with such longing as the thirsty feel for 
water. Neither boy nor girl who comes 
back for the first-named reason should find 
a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any 
banquet that the old folks have had to pay 
for, but the prodigal who returns because 
there is something left in his or her heart 
like the music in a shell, which nothing can 
destroy or hush away to silence, be that 
prodigal sinful man or erring woman, 
should find not only the home doors swung 
wide in welcome, but every doorway in the 
land wreathed with flowers to bid him 
enter. 



How few people know when to stop. If 
the preacher knew when to stop preaching, 
how much more satisfactory the result of his 
sermon might be. If the genial fellow knew 
just when to stop telling his good stories, 
how much keener their relish would be. If 
the moralizer knew just when to stop mor- 



alizing, how much longer the flavor of his 
philosophy would endure. If the friend 
knew when to keep still, how grateful his 
silence would be. If the candid creature 
who so glibly tells of our foibles knew when 
to hold his tongue, how much less strong 
our impulse to slap him would be. If the 
high-liver knew when to stop eating, how 
much less sure dyspepsia would be. If the 
popular guest knew when to withdraw, how 
much more regretfully we should see him 
go. If the politician knew when to retire 
into private life, how much whiter his record 
would be. If we all knew just when to die, 
and could opportunely bring the event 
about, how much truer our epitaphs would 
be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, 
be merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper 
than he knew, and the man who prays, "Oh 
God, teach me to know when I have said 
enough," prays deeper still. 



w 



You may talk about California all you 
will, but match, if you can, the beauty of 
spring as it comes to us in these northerly 
latitudes. There is the coy advance and re- 



56 ^jcr^jemaru antf ^u^* 

treat of a woman hard to win; there is the 
crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly har- 
monies; there is the dissolving view that 
glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the 
mirage of a misty sea. I was in California 
a year ago, in April time. I found the month 
that poets love in full splendor, like a queen 
who never doffs her crown. Violets, roses, 
lilacs and carnations came all together in a 
riotous rush. One did not have to woo the 
season; it was already won. Like a matron 
crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, 
the earth received the homage that is due 
achievement. Nobody caught the sound of 
the first robin on a rainy morning and her- 
alded it with a shout; the first robin, like 
the first principle in creation, never exist- 
ed, for the reason that he was always there. 
There were no foretellings of green along 
the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of 
violets in the air; no uplifting of the hypati- 
ca's dow^ny head above the lattice of fuzzy 
leaves ; everything was right where you dis- 
covered it, and had been all the year round. 
Without beginning and without end, spring 
exists forever, like a picture bound within a 
book, in the lovely land of the Gringos. 
But walk out some April morning in the 



suburbs that surround Chicago. Catch the 
tonic of the air, Hke wine ever so delicately 
chilled with ice. View the lake, Hke a gen- 
tian flower fringed with a horizon fine as 
silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the 
valiant Robin Hood in his suit of green, 
leading his legion upward to the sun. With- 
out the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a 
lance, they come to take possession of the 
earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy 
eye upon you, and listen to the minstrel in 
the tower, where the winds are harping to 
the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like 
silhouettes cut in coral, and the sheath of 
the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. 
Rejoice in the flash of the blue bird's wing 
as it startles the still air, and then say to me, 
if you dare, that you prefer any other climate 
to this one that belts the zone of these north- 
ern lakes. 



Thank the Lord, all ye who can call your- 
selves healthy. The day has gone by for 
physically delicate women. This age de- 
mands Hebes and young Venuses with am- 
ple waists and veritable muscles. Specked 



58 ^0&i^tnavi^ antf ^u^* 

fruit and specked people go in the same 
category in the popular taste. To the ques- 
tion, "How are you to-day?" I for one, al- 
ways feel like replying in the words of an 
old Irish servant we once had (God rest her 
faithful soul wherever it be this windy day!), 
"First-rate, glory be to God !" It is such a 
grand thing to be well and strong, to feel 
that your soul is riding on its way to glory 
in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old 
mud-cart. Talk about happiness ! Why, a 
well beggar has a better time of it than a sick 
king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your 
strong wing uplifts you above the countless 
shafts of pain which that grim old sports- 
man. Death, is ever aiming at poor humani- 
ty, count yourself an ingrate if the song of 
thanksgiving is not always welling from 
your heart like the constant song of a bobo- 
link singing for very joy above the clover. 



What would be thought of a ship that was 
launched from its docks with flourish of 
music and flowing wine, built to sail the 
roughest and deepest sea, yet manned for 
an unending cruise along shore? Never 



leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never 
swinging out of the land-girt bay because 
over the bar, the waters were deep and 
rough. You would say of such a ship that 
its captain was a coward and the company 
that built it were fools. 

And yet these souls of ours were fash- 
ioned for bottomless soundings. There is 
no created thing that draws as deep as the 
soul of man; our life lies straight across 
the ocean and not along shore, but we are 
afraid to venture; we hang upon thte coast 
and explore shallow lagoons or swing at 
anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike 
the keel into riches and cruise about therein, 
like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of 
us are contented all our days to ride at 
anchor in the becalmed waters of selfish 
ease. There are guns at every port-hole 
of the ship we sail, but we use them for pegs 
to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to 
stack full of idle hours. We shall never 
smell powder, although the magazine is 
stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight 
the devil and his deeds. When I see a man 
strolling along at his ease, while under his 
very nose some brute is maltreating a horse, 
or some coward venting his ignoble wrath 



60 ^o^^ntctru anlf ^nz* 

upon a creature more helpless than he, 
whether it be a child or a dog, I involuntarily 
think of a double-decked whaler content to 
fish for minnows. Their uselessness in the 
world is more apparent than the uselessness 
of a Cunarder in a park pond. 

What did God give you muscle and girth 
and brain for, if not to launch you on 
the high seas? Up and away with you then 
into the deep soundings where you belong, 
oh, belittled soul ! Find the work to do for 
which you were fitted and do it, or else run 
yourself on the first convenient snag and 
founder. 

Some great writer has said that we ought 
to begin life as at the source of a river, 
growing deeper every league to the sea, 
whereas, in fact, thousands enter the river 
at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less and 
less water every day, until in old age they 
lie shrunk and gasping upon dry ground. 

But there are more who do not sail at all 
than there are of those who make the mis- 
take of saiHng up stream. There are the 
women who devote their lives to the petty 
business of pleasing worthless men. What 
progress do they make even inland? With 
sails set and brassy stanchions polished to 



the similitude of gold, they hover a Hfe- 
time chained to a dock and decay of their 
own uselessness at last, like keels that are 
mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable 
thing in the world to please. Suppose it shall 
please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see 
you set fire to your clothing and burn to 
death, or break your bones one by one upon 
a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily 
parts that the poor lunatics might be enter- 
tained. Would it pay to be pleasing to 
such an audience at such a sacrifice? But 
the destruction of the loveliest body in the 
world is nothing compared to the demorali- 
zation of soul that takes place when women 
subvert everything lofty and noble within 
their nature to win. the transient regard of 
a few worthless men of the world. They 
learn to smoke cigarettes because such men 
profess to like to see a pretty woman afifect 
the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in 
public places and barter their honor all too 
often for handsome clothes in which to 
make a vain parade, all to please some 
heathen man, who in reality counts them a 
great way inferior to the value of a good 
horse. The right sort of a sweetheart, my 
dear, never desires to bring a woman down 



62 gt00^mtttru tt«^ ^uje* 

to his own level. He prefers to put her on a 
pedestal and say his prayers to her. Never 
think that you are winning an admiration 
that counts for much if you have to abate 
one whit of your womanhood to win it. 
Every time I see a woman drinking in a 
pubHc resort, making herself conspicuous 
by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of 
some fair ship that should be making for 
the eternal city, with all its snow-white 
canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, 
arm's length from a barren land. We were 
put into this world with a clean way bill 
for another port than this. Across the ocean 
of life our way lies, straight to the harbor 
of the city of gold. We are freighted with 
a consignment from quarter-deck to keel 
which is bound to be delivered sooner or 
later at the great master's wharf. Let us 
be alert, then, to recognize the seriousness 
of our own destinies and content ourselves 
no longer with shallow soundings. Spread 
the sails, weigh the anchor and point the 
prow for the country that lies the other side 
a deep and restless sea. Sooner or later the 
voyage must be made ; let us make it, then, 
while the timber is stanch and the rudder 
true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and 



^0&etnavvi anh gtu^* 63 

the great God himself to furnish the chart, 
our ship shall weather the wildest gale and 
find entrance at last to the harbor of peace. 



* 



When you look at a picture and find it 
good or bad, as the case may be, whom do 
you praise or blame — the owner of the pic- 
ture or the artist who painted it? When you 
hear a strain of music and are either lifted 
to heaven or cast into the other place by its 
harmonies or its discord, whom do you 
thank or curse for the benefaction or the 
infliction, whichever it may have proved to 
be — the man who wrote the score or the 
music dealer who sold it? You go to a 
restaurant and order spring chicken which 
turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is 
to blame — the waiter who serves it or the 
business man of the concern who does the 
marketing? And so when you encounter 
the bad boy, whom do you hold responsible 
for his badness — the boy himself or the 
mother who trained him? I declare, as I 
look about me from day to day and see the 
men and women who play so poor a part in 
life, it is not the poverty of their perform- 



64 ^o^ientavt^ anb ^u«* 

ance that astonishes me so much as the fact 
that it is as good as it is. 

I 

I did think I would keep out of the con- 
troversy on the low-neck dress question. 
But there is just one thing I want to say. 
Did you ever know a sweet young girl yet, 
one who was rightly trained and modestly 
brought up, who took to decollete dresses 
naturally? Is not the first wearing of one 
a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the 
bloom is off the peach that a young wom- 
an is willing to show her pretty shoulders 
and neck to the crowd; and who cares much 
for a rubbed plum or a brushed peach? 
I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-heart- 
ed woman, be she young or old, divesting 
herself of half her clothes and thrusting 
herself upon the notice of ribald men. I 
can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing 
frog. The conjunction is not possible. The 
cheek that will blush at the story of repent- 
ant shame, that will flame with indignant 
protest when the skirts of a Magdalene 
brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at 
thought of uncovering neck and bust in a 



crowded theater or public reception is not 
the cheek of modest and natural woman- 
hood. It is not necessary to be a prude or 
a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh 
against the custom. I know full well how 
contemptible the affectations and hypoc- 
risies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil 
was meant for good. The high chancellor 
of Hades has put his seal on much that was 
originally invoiced for the Lord's own peo- 
ple. But there are some things so palpably 
shameless that to argue about them is like 
trying to prove by demonstration that a 
crow is white. It needs no argument. 



^ 



THE VETERANS. 

Scarce had the bugle note sounded 
For the call of their last defeat; 

And still on the lowland meadow 
Lie the prints of their quick retreat. 

Above us the bright skies sparkle, 
And around us the same winds blow 

That rippled their golden banners 
In that battle so long ago. 

When the southwind challenged winter. 
And the rose-ranks routed the snow. 

And the hosts of tiny gold coats 
Sprang up from their campfires below, 
5 



66 ^00^maru anlf ^uje* 

To charge on tlie insolent frost king, 
And shatter his lance of ice, 

While back to the desolate northland 
They wheeled him about in a trice. 

The battle is hardly ended, 

The victory only begun. 
Yet I saw the gray-bearded vet'rans, 

To-day, sitting out in the sun. 

They nod by wind-rippled rivers, 
They shake in the shade of the oak. 

And all the day long they murmur 
And whisper, and gossip, and croak. 

And often in wondering rapture. 
They recount the charge they made, 

When down from the windy hillsides, 
And up through the dewy glade. 

The sheen of their golden bonnets 
Shone out from the green of the leaves. 

Like the flight of a glancing swallow. 
Or the flash of a wave on the seas. 

They muse in sleepy contentment. 
Or flutter in endless dispute. 

For this was a brave cadet, sir. 
And that one a crippled recruit. 

Fight over again your battles, 
O veterans, withered and gray; 

For a band of northwind chasseurs 
To-morrow shall blow you away. 



Once upon a time it came to pass that a 
woman, being weary with much running to 
and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream. 

And in her dream she beheld a mighty- 
host, more than man could number. And 
of that host, all were women, and spake 
with varying tongues. 

And they bent the body, and sitting on 
hard benches wailed mightily, so that the air 
was full of the sound of lamentation, like a 
garden that wooeth many bees. 

And the woman who dreamed, being ten- 
der of heart and disposed kindly toward 
the suffering ones, lifted up her voice say- 
ing: 

"Why bendest thou the body, oh, daugh- 
ters of despair, and why art thine eyelids 
red with tears? 

"Yea, why rockest thou like boats that 
find no anchor, and like poplars which the 
north wind smiteth?" 

And one from among the host greater 
than man could number made answer, say- 
ing: 

"Wouldst know who we are, and why we 
spend our days like a weaver's shuttle that 
flitteth to and fro in a web of tears? 

"Behold we are the faithless and unregen- 



68 ^jcr^jentttru anb ^u^* 

erate handmaids who have served thee, and 
women like unto thee, bringing desolation 
unto thy larders, and gray hairs among the 
braids with which nature hath crowned 
thee. 

"Yea, verily, by reason of our misde- 
meanors lift we the voice of lamentation in 
a land that knoweth not comfort." 

Now, the woman who dreamed, being 
full of amazement, replied anon, and these 
were the words that fell from her lips : 

"Say est thou so? And dwellest thou and 
thy sisters in Hades by reason of the evil 
thou hast wrought?" 

"Nay, not forever," repHed she who had 
spoken. "We remain but for a season, that 
our remorse may cleanse our record before 
we go hence to sit with the blessed ones 
in glory. 

"Not from everlasting unto everlasting is 
the duration of the penalty we pay for what 
we have done unto thee, else were there no 
peace between the stars by reason of our 
torment and our tears." 

And the woman who dreamed beheld 
many whose fame yet lingered within the 
shadows of her home. 

There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who 



^O0^tnaxv^ antf ^we* 69 

piled the backyard high with broken china, 
yet stayed not her hand when rebuked 
therefor. 

There was Sarah, the high-headed, who 
refused to clean the paint because she had 
dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the 
housecleaning done by other hands, that 
the labors of the handmaid might be few ; 

Yea, verily, with such as believed that 
Sarah and her ilk might have time wherein 
to be merry rather than toil. 

There was Karen, the Swede, who 
wrapped the bread in her petticoat and re- 
fused to be convinced of the error of her 
ways. 

There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke 
the pump, and Caroline, the Teuton, who 
combed her locks with the comb of the 
woman who dreamed. 

There was Adaline, the hoosier, who 
failed to answer the summons of the strang- 
er who knocked at the gates unless she were 
in full dress and carried a perfumed hand- 
kerchief. 

There was Louise, who smote the young- 
est born of the household because he prat- 
tled of her deaHngs with the frequent cousin 
who called often and sought to deplete the 
larder. 



70 ^00^matry anb ^ue* 

There was the girl who desired her even- 
ings out and never came home before cock 
crow. 

There was the girl who threw up her 
place in the family of the woman who 
dreamed because she was asked to hurry 
her ways. 

There was the girl who wore the hose of 
her mistress, and took it as an affront when 
asked to desist. 

There was the girl who swore when the 
chariot of the sometime guest drew nigh, 
and likewise the girl who refused to remain 
over night in a dwelling where she was sum- 
moned to serve by means of a call bell. 

There was the girl who found it too lone- 
some in the country and left the garments 
in the washtub that she might hie her to the 
great city, the social center of which she 
was the joy and the pride. 

There was the girl who was made mad 
by means of the request that she wash her 
hands before breakfast. 

There was the girl who entertained her 
callers in the drawing-room while the fam- 
ily was afar of¥, sojourning in the hills or by 
the waves of the sea; 

Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth 



the flesh-pot and the brandied comfit, that 
the heart of the district poHceman might 
leap thereat, as the young buck leapeth at 
sight of the water courses. 

There was also the girl who wasted, and 
the girl who stole ; the girl who never tried, 
and the girl who never cared. 

And seeing the multitude the spirit of the 
woman who dreamed arose within her and 
she asked of a certain veiled one who 
seemed to be in charge: 

"Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never 
to be any diminution in the throng that 
cometh to take their abode in these halls of 
penitential regret?" 

And the spirit in charge made answer, 
saying: 

"No, nor never shall be while fools live 
and folly thrives. 

"It is by reason of the babbling of busy- 
bodies that havoc has overtaken the land 
of thy forefathers. 

"There is honor in faithful service, and 
an uncorruptible crown awaiteth the fore- 
head of her who serveth well. 

"It is no disgrace to the comely daugh- 
ters of men who toil and are put to that they 
bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths 
of the children who call them father — 



72 ^o&jenxixv^ ^^n^ ^ue* 

"It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such 
maidens take unto themselves the position 
of servants in the family of him who pros- 
pereth, 

"Remembering that one who lived long 
since and has slept these many years in the 
tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he ut- 
tered these words, albeit framed in rhyme: 

"Honor and shame from no condition rise; 
Act well your part, there all the honor lies." 

And it came to pass that the woman who 
dreamed took comfort to herself by reason 
of her dream. 

And she arose from slumber like a strong 
man who desireth to run a race. 

And buckling on more tightly the armor 
wherein she moved, yea, even with a free 
hand buttoning the boot and drawing the 
string, she cogitated unto herself, and these 
were the words of her cogitation: 

"Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that 
I may be unto my handmaids a friend rather 
than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may 
win unto my household the damsel who hath 
intelligence. And my treatment of her shall 
be such that many wise ones who call that 
damsel friend shall decide to do even as she 



hath done and choose domestic service with 
a woman who is kind even to the showing of 
interest in her handmaid's affairs, rather 
than linger in bondage with the shop girl 
and her who rattles the tinkling keys of the 
typewriter machine. 

"So doing, my days shall increase might- 
ily in the land, as also the days of her who 
cometh after me." 



Women are either the noblest creation 
of God or the meanest. A good woman is 
little less than an angel; a bad woman is 
considerably more than a devil. And by 
bad women I do not mean women who 
drink, or steal, or frequent brothels. The 
chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue. 
With a lie she can do more deadly work 
than the fellow in the bible did with the 
jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the funda- 
mental strata of all evil in a bad woman's 
nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded 
than many men with revolvers. There is 
absolutely no protection from a lie. The 
courts cannot protect from its venom, and 
to kill a defamer and a falsifier is not yet 
adjudged as legalized slaughter. 



74 ^o&i^tnavvi atitf ^me* 



There is one awfully homely woman in 
Chicago. I met her the other day over in 
Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was 
brief but sensational. I looked at her, 
tucked her into my handbag and wept She 
didn't seem to mind it, and when, a few 
hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, 
I took her out of the bag and looked at her 
again, she was more hideous than before. 

"You horrible creature!" said I. "If you 
look like me, better that the uttermost 
depths of the sea had me." 

"But I do look like you," said she, and 
her voice was weak and low by reason of 
prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and 
Mr. Blank says I will finish up very nicely." 

"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that 
my nose is as big as yours?" 

"Of course it is," said she; "pictures can- 
not lie. But comfort yourself with the as- 
surance that a large nose is always an indi- 
cation of intelligence." 

"Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was 
getting excited; "intelligence without 
beauty is like bread without butter, or a pea- 



cock without a tail ! If I possess such a nose 
as yours, madam, I shall take to tract-dis- 
tributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, 
and forget that I was ever human." 

"You talk wildly, as all the rest of them 
do," said my thin companion. "Listen, for 
my time on earth is short, I am rapidly 
fading away, and what I say must be said 
briefly. If you look about you you will see 
that there exists, more or less hidden in 
every breast, the belief of one's own beauty. 
The mirror, although a faithful friend, can 
never quite disabuse the mind of that belief, 
and when the honest camera holds up the 
actual presentation of one's self as an in- 
controvertible fact, the disappointment is 
keen and hard to bear." 

"All that may be true," said I, "but not all 
your assertions can ever make me believe 
that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back 
so wildly from those beetling brows, is like 
my own. You know that mine is soft and 
brown, and yours looks like the bristles of 
an enraged stove brush." 

"That's the way they all talk," responded 
the dissolving view, "but you do not stop to 
consider that under the artist's pencil the 
shadows will all be toned and softened. 



76 Itjcr^jentaru anh ^u^* 

And let me say right here, that that 'beetHng 
brow' is a sign of rare intelHgence, much 
more to be desired than the lower and 

more " 

"Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It 
is not necessary to have a brow like a 
plate-glass show-window, or like an over- 
hanging cliff, or like a granite paving-stone, 
to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do 
not try to lift this shadow from my soul. 
That mouth that looks like a dark biscuit, 
that nose that looks like a promontory over- 
hanging an unseen sea, that hair that looks 
like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow 
that looks like a skating-rink, all make me 
sad. I shall never have my picture taken 
again. If I look like that it is time I died. 
In the round of an eventful life I may forget 
that I even saw you, but until I do I am a 
tired woman. My mirror may assuage my 
sorrow, for that either lies or catches me 
from a different point of view. Vanish then, 
oh, yellow shade of an unhappy reality. 
Back to oblivion with you, and heaven 
grant I never look upon your like again!" 
So saying, I calmly held the poor but hid- 
eous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and 
smilingly cremated her. 



^00etn(xvi3 ttnJ» line, 77 



^ 



A fairer day than last Sunday was never 
cradled to rest behind the curtains of night. 
It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, 
orbed itself into a full orchestra wherein 
color took the part of first and second vio- 
lins, and declined at last into the hush of 
sunset like the mellow notes of a cello under 
old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such 
days visit the earth rarely. They are ad- 
vance sheets of a story that is going to be 
told in heaven; preludes to a song that we 
shall hear in its perfection only when we 
have got through with the clattering dis- 
cords of time. Thank God for all such days. 
They do us more good than we know. The 
sight of the woods, adorned as only queens 
are adorned for the court of the king, the 
sound of falling leaves and lonely bird 
songs, of hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, 
tremulous and sweet and low under the rus- 
set shadows, uplift our souls and help us to 
forget, for the time being at least, how tired 
we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil 
and how tormented and misjudged and ca- 
lumniated we are by those who fain would 



78 ^00!^ntavv[ antf ^u^* 

do us harm. I think if I had time to do 
some of the things I want to do the first 
consummation of that happy time would be 
to build me a little cabin in the woods, 
where, in utter loneliness, I could forget 
how full the world is growing to be of folks 
and how prone they are to do each other 
harm and hinder rather than help each other 
on the stony way to heaven. 



The other evening, while sitting in the 
gallery of the Auditorium and looking over 
the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for 
the curtain to rise, a strange thought came 
to my mind. How could hell be more 
quickly created than by the unmasking of 
such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove 
from humanity all power of self-control and 
conventional dissimulation; force men and 
women to be natural, and act out every evil 
impulse latent in their souls, and could Dante 
himself portray a blacker Inferno? The 
man whose heart is full of murderous ha- 
tred — tear off the mask that hides his per- 
turbed soul, and what a demon would look 
forth! The woman behind whose amiable 



seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling 
temper and crafty deceit — what a pande- 
monium would ensue when such passion 
broke forth like straining dogs from the 
leash! The old man with the saintly face 
and the crown of hoary hair — could an open 
cage of foul birds send forth a blacker 
brood than should fly out from his soul 
when some omnipotent hand unlatched the 
bars of its prison and let the unclean 
thoughts go free? The young man with the 
perfumed breath and the suave and courtly 
manner — does any storied hell hold captive 
blacker demons than the cruel selfishness, 
the impurities and the secret vices that walk 
to and fro in his soul Hke tigers behind 
their bars? The young girl with face like 
a rose and the form of a Juno — could any- 
thing that hades holds strike greater dismay 
to the hearts of men than the unmasking of 
her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour 
strikes for unmasking time in life's parade 
ball, when death steps forth and with cool, 
relentless touch unties the knot that holds 
the silken thing in place that has hidden our 
true selves from our beautiful seeming, we 
shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us 
than that we have carried so long in our 
hearts. 



80 ^o^jetnatry attJCf ^u^* 

I would not like to be regarded as a pes- 
simist from the writing of such a paragraph 
as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn 
my thoughts upon the crowd and unmask 
the angel as well as the demon. But I find 
that the angels, as a general thing, wear 
no face concealers. They go disguised in 
poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, 
but the angel within them is like a singing 
bird rather than like a silent and chained 
beast. It reveals itself in songs, like a caged 
lark. It looks from out the window of the 
eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; 
it manifests itself in sweet and cheerful ser- 
vice, like the sunshine that can neither be 
hidden nor concealed. 



Of all the pleasant things to look upon in 
this fair earth, I sometimes query which is 
the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in 
early June, or a young girl. I think the 
latter carries the day. Did you ever watch 
a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the 
mossy gable of a sloping roof? How they 
flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen 
their delicate feathers and get all mixed up 



^o^^maru anb Jlw^* 8i 

with the sunshine and the shadow, until 
which is bird and which is sunbeam one 
can scarcely tell. There is a flock of girls 
with whom I ride every morning, and they 
make me think of birds and sunbeams. 
They are so bewitching with their changeful 
moods and graces that I sit and watch them 
as one listens to the twitter of swallows. 
They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar 
sweetens dough; they fill it with music as 
sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless 
the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome 
girls, and may womanhood be for them but 
as the "swell of some sweet time," morning 
gliding into noon, May merging into June. 



There are so many things in this world 
to be tired of! The poor little persecuted 
boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him 
out of the way, doomed to dangle his plump 
legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing 
his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes 
and wondering if eternity can last any longer 
than a public school session, grows no more 
tired of watching the flies on the ceiling and 
the shadows on the wall than some folks get 



82 lioe^maru ant> ©««♦ 

of life. Let me mention a few of the things 
I, for one, am horribly tired of, and see if 
before my bead is half strung you do not 
look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I 
am with you!" 

My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization 
and all modern improvements. I am tired 
of the speaking tube within my chamber 
where the new girl and myself wage daily 
our battle of the new Babel. She speaks 
Volapuk, and I do not, consequently she 
takes my demand for coal as an in- 
sult or an encouraging remark, just as 
the mood may be upon her, and pays 
no more attention to my request for 
drinking water than the unweaned child 
pays to the sighing wind. I am tired 
of sewer gas and what the scientists call 
''bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going 
about with frescoed tonsils, the result of the 
three. I am tired of gargling my own throat 
and the throats of my helpless babes, and 
the throat of the casual visitor within my 
gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward ofif 
deadly disease. I am tired of nosing drains 
and buying copperas and hounding the 
latent plumber that he adjust the water- 
pipes. I am tired of boiling the cistern 



gljcr^^mam ctnt> |lu:e* 83 

water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired 
of skipping from Dan to Beersheba daily for 
men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes and 
the unsightly rubbish that have emerged 
from long retirement underneath the snow. 
I am tired of imploring the small boy to 
keep his mother's chickens ofif my porch. 
I am tired of digging graves upon the com- 
mon wherein to bury useless potato-parings, 
the unsightly cheese-rind, and the shattered 
egg-shell. I am tired of being told that my 
neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, 
and my neighbor's blooded stock of poultry 
are dying because of the copperas I scatter 
broadcast about the mouth of drains. I am 
tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a 
monomaniac on the subject of sanitary 
science. I am tired of sharpening lead pen- 
cils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when 
I want to be cross. I am tired of the ceaseless 
grind of Hfe, which like the upper and nether 
mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and 
the spirit to dust. I am tired of being told 
that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil, 
and of being implored in thrilling whispers 
to wipe it away. I am tired of last year's 
seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two- 
legged donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a 



84 |ijci0«maru atitf ^nc* 

change in the methods of doing business 
around at the postoffice, and for the dawn 
of that blessed day when I shall be permitted 
to dance upon the grave of the aged being 
who peddles stamps at the retail window. 
I am tired of hosts of things besides, but 
have no time to enumerate them all to-day. 



I have tested the rainy weather dress re- 
form. It was pouring when I started from 
my humble home in the morning, and in 
spite of the prayers of the Young Person 
and the sobs of the ''Martyr," I arrayed my- 
self in my new, highly sensible and demoni- 
acally ugly suit and weathered the elements. 
Within two hours it stopped raining; the 
sun came out and the streets filled with 
festively attired men and women, and where 
was I ? Stranded on a clear day in garments 
befitting a castaway! My flannel dress, 
short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair 
weather. "In the name of heaven," ex- 
claimed a friend, as I bore down upon him 
beneath a cloudless sky, "what have you got 
on?" "Go home! for the love of humanity, 
go home !" said another. And what was I to 



^oistietnavvi an^ ^ne* 85 

do? Await another storm like a crab in its 
shell, or venture forth and become the by- 
word of an overwrought populace, the scorn 
of old men and matrons? Next time I start 
out in a reform dress I will take along the 
robes of civilization in a grip-sack. 



There is something that is getting to be 
awfully scarce in this world. Shall I tell 
you what it is? It is girls. That is what is 
missing out of the sentient, breathing, living 
world just now. We have lots of young la- 
dies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, 
old-fashioned girls of ever so long ago are 
vanished with the poke bonnets and the cin- 
namon cookies. Let me enumerate a few 
of the kinds of girls that are wanted. In 
the first place we want home girls — girls 
who are mothers' right hand; girls who can 
cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, 
and smooth out the tangles in the domestic 
skein when things get twisted; girls whom 
father takes comfort in for something bet- 
ter than beauty, and the big brothers are 
proud of for something that outranks the 
ability to dance or shine in society. Next, 
we want girls of sense— girls who have a 



86 lljor^^ntatrtj antf glu^* 

standard of their own regardless of con- 
ventionalities, and are independent enough 
to live up to it; girls who simply won't 
wear a trailing dress on the street to gather 
up microbes and^ all sorts of defilement; 
girls who won't wear a high hat to the 
theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger 
their health with high heels and corsets; 
girls who will wear what is pretty and be- 
coming and snap their fingers at the dictates 
of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. 
And we want good girls — girls who are 
sweet, right straight out from the heart to 
the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls 
with less knowledge of sin and duplicity 
and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little 
school girl at ten has all too often ; girls who 
say their prayers and read their Bibles and 
love God and keep his commandments. 
(We want these girls "awful bad !") And we 
want careful girls and prudent girls, who 
think enough of the generous father who 
toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the 
gentle mother who denies herself much that 
they may have so many pretty things, to 
count the cost and draw the line between 
the essentials and the non-essentials; girls 
who strive to save and not to spend; girls 



^o&i^tnfxvvi antf ilue. 



87 



who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and 
a comfort in the home rather than an ex- 
pensive and a useless burden. We want 
girls with hearts — girls who are full of ten- 
derness and sympathy, with tears that flow 
for other people's ills, and smiles that light 
outward their own beautiful thoughts. We 
have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, 
and witty girls. Give us a consignment of 
jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive 
girls; kind and entertaining to their own 
folks, and with little desire to shine in the 
garish world. With a few such girls scat- 
tered around life would freshen up for all of 
us, as the weather does under the spell of 
summer showers. Speed the day when this 
sort of girls fill the world once more, over- 
running the spaces where God puts them as 
climbing roses do when they break through 
the trellis to glimmer and glint above the 
common highway, a blessing and a boon 
to all who pass them by. 
5,1 



^ 



Is there any flower that grows that can 
compare with the pansy for color and rich- 
ness? Others appeal more closely to the 
heart with fragrance that like a sweet and 



88 ^0^etnavxii an^ ^nc. 

pure soul more than compensates for lack 
of exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous 
category none rank this velvet flower that 
lies just now upon my window-sill. There is 
the purple of Queen Sheba mantled in its 
soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir 
was not more sumptuous; the light that 
breaks at dawn across a reef of dove-gray 
clouds was never more deHcate than the 
violet heart of this lovely blossom. When I 
want to think of the ideal court of kings, of 
a royal meeting-place for blameless scions 
and unsullied princes of the blood, I do not 
think of old-world palaces and coronation 
halls — I think rather of a pansy bed in June 
in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind just 
bending bright heads crowned with crowns 
that never yet were pressed on aching 
brows, and fluttering mantles of more than 
royal splendor that never yet were wrapped 
above a corrupt and breaking heart. 



MY ROSE AND MY CHILD. 

I held in my bosom a beautiful rose, 
All gay with the splendor of June; 

Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows, 
Its blush like the sunshine at noon. 



^o^ttnavvi antf ilu^> 89 

But e'en as I held it I knew it must fade; 

Its bloom was as brief as the hour. 
The dews of the evening like soft tears were 
laid 

On the grave of my beauteous flower, 

I held in my bosom a beautiful child, 
The splendor of love in her eyes; 
No snow on high hills was more undefiled 
* Than her soul in its innocent guise. 

But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed; 

I knew, like my rose, she must go; 
So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips 
I kissed — 

She sleeps with my rose in the snow. 



It was not so very long ago that I 
chanced to overhear a lively young woman 
make this remark about her mother: 

"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for 
my sister. She never seems like anything 
more than one of my girl friends." 

Poor child, thought I, your state is only 
another phase of orphanhood, for the young 
life that has no counsel of motherhood is 
bereft indeed. 

No girlish comradeship, however juvenile 
and delightful it may be, can possibly take 
the place of protecting, counseling, mother- 



90 ^0&etntxvvi antf ^uie* 

love. Not but what the sweetest relation- 
ship possible exists where the mother keeps 
her heart young and in sympathy with her 
daughter, but there is something else requi- 
site to mother-love. 

The best mothers are those who have 
roomy laps where the big girls love to sit 
while they whisper the confidences they 
never could reveal to sister-mothers. They 
have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of 
mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, 
yes, and the tired boys, too, and rock them 
to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch 
the floor." 

They used to tell me I must never sit on 
anybody's lap after my feet reached the car- 
pet, but, thank God, that rule never applied 
to my mother. 

You are never afraid of disturbing moth- 
er's "beauty sleep" when you come in late 
at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as 
far removed from frisky girl companion- 
ship as the moon is from its reflection. 

No matter how tardy your home-faring 
may be she is always up with a lunch and a 
warm fire in winter or a glass of something 
cool and fresh in summer to soothe your 
overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if 



^0&etnavi^ antf Jlw^* 9i 

she is forever dancing about with you in 
your youthful larks. She has a way of calm- 
ing your tempers with a joke and a caress, of 
which the sister-mother never dreams. She 
has also a way of smoothing your hair, 
which your girl comrade never caught the 
trick of, for the reason that she is kept too 
busy curling her own love-locks. When 
your head aches, the right sort of mother 
knows just how to pet you to sleep and 
leave you in a darkened room with a rose 
on your pillow to greet your waking eyes; 
if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly 
way to coax you to take bitter medicine. 
She bathes your feet and dries them on nice 
warm towels. She keeps the younger chil- 
dren from guying you, because your nose is 
red; in short, she does a thousand nice 
things of which the sister-mother has no 
knack whatever. 

When great trouble falls to your share, 
when sharp betrayal pierces your heart, and 
trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold 
of what good is the juvenile mother with 
her girlish tremors and tears? You want 
somebody next in tenderness to God, to 
hold you fast and tight. You want some- 
body who has suffered and grown strong, 



92 ^o&^etnavti^ anh Jlw^* 

to soothe your breaking heart. Somebody 
who can be silent and brave and steady 
until your fever is passed. The shipwrecked 
sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of 
throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants 
a heart like rock, rather than a handclasp 
and a promise. The sister-mother may be 
all right to go to parties with, but you want 
something stronger and more steadfast to 
lean upon in time of perplexity. You want 
a mother in all the holy significance of the 
name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, 
it cannot be so blessed as the bond of pa- 
tient, long-suffering, sanctified motherhood. 
Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with 
your girls, then, mothers, but be content to 
occupy a generation removed from the path 
they tread. Don't make up in emulation of 
their beauty; don't seek to win away their 
beaus and outdress them. Don't go decol- 
lete to parties where your girls should be 
the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with 
them in fascination or in charm. Be guider 
and ready counselor, but don't try to be 
rival. If God has given you a girl child, and 
that child has grown to womanhood, accept 
the condition of things and give over being 
a society belle yourself, abdicating your 



^a^jemaru an^ ^uje* 93 

place for the infinitely sweeter one of moth- 
er. You cannot be the right sort of mother 
and ignore your duty to your child. That 
duty lies in giving her her rightful place in 
the line of march from which you are crowd- 
ed out. Let her carry the banner while you 
fall back a little. Watch over her, make 
things easy for her, smooth the little diffi- 
culties out of her way, be on hand when she 
comes home tired and excited to soothe 
her to rest and calm; counsel her how to 
pick her way through the snares that are 
laid for youth and beauty, be a refuge where 
she can run when the rainy weather sets 
in, which is sure to fall in the summer time 
of youth, somewhere and somehow. In 
short, be just as sympathetic and chummy 
and sociable as possible, but at the same 
time make your daughter feel that you are 
older and stronger and wiser than she, by 
reason of your motherhood, and that next 
to God you stand ready to shield her, to 
guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, 
to forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and 
to shrive her if she needs confessing. Teach 
her that your love can never fail, that your 
heart is a rock and a fortress and a shield 
for her to seek in all life's bewilderment, far 



94 ^o^j^tnavv^ an^ ^u^* 

surer and more steadfast than any other love 
beneath the stars can ever yield. 

When I think of all it means to be a moth- 
er I tremble to think how far short of the 
standard the best of us fall. I would rather 
have it said of me when I die, "She was a 
good mother," than that men should get 
together and exploit my deeds as poet, re- 
former, artist or story-teller. I would rather 
feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon 
my face than wear a laureate's crown. 

Don't be critical, or censorious, or re- 
served with your daughters; don't hold 
them far ofif and cultivate respect and fear 
rather than love; don't be self-assertive and 
cause them to feel their dependence upon 
you in an unpleasant way; don't be too 
eager to keep them in the background in 
little things relating to the home, such as 
giving them no voice in the arrangement 
of the room and the domestic regulations. 
Indeed, I have known more attrition caused 
in the home circle from this last mentioned 
point of difference between mother and 
daughters than almost any other. I know 
a family, presided over by a good, unselfish 
woman, who, as a mother, is the most com- 
plete failure I ever ran across. Her daugh- 



^oaemavt^ anb ^u^* 95 

ter is of mature age and pronounced opin- 
ions, but she is kept in the background and 
her Hfe rendered most unhappy by the dom- 
inant will of the mother whose old-fashioned 
views as to running the house are directly 
opposed to more modern customs. The two 
wrangle continually over the establishment 
of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the 
drapery of a window, the adjustment of fur- 
niture, until there is less harmony under the 
roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. 
How much better it would be if that mother 
would yield a little to the wishes of her 
daughter; give the latter a chance to display 
her own taste and carry out her inclination. 
I don't beHeve in the mothers and fathers 
of grown-up daughters always insisting 
upon the occupancy of the front seats and 
the leadership of the orchestra. 

The mother who can preserve the respect 
of her children without chilling their love; 
who can be one with them, and yet apart, 
in the sense of guiding, aiding and consol- 
ing, who can hold their confidence while she 
maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is 
the happy and successful mother. The title 
is a sacred one, made by the chrism of 
pain and suffering, sanctified by the hu- 



96 ^00^tnav\^ anlf ^u^* 

inanity of Christ and set apart as one of the 
three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Moth- 
er, home and heaven." 

r 

Now that the days draw nigh for the re- 
turn of the birds to our northern woods and 
dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little 
'iove feast" with the boys. You know what 
a love feast is, if there was ever a Methodist 
in your family. It is a good, cozy talk 
among the brethren and sisters in regard 
to the best way of putting down the devil, 
and giving the good angels a chance. And if 
there was ever need of downing the devil it 
is in the particular instance of a boy's in- 
humanity to birds and beasts. I have ex- 
pressed myself as to horses, and to-day I 
shall talk about birds. On these spring 
mornings, when the world is enveloped in a 
golden halo, from out of which, like angel 
voices from the quiet depths of heaven, the 
birds are singing their impromptu of praise, 
imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal 
boys going forth with guns and sling-shots 
to break up the concert and murder the 
choristers. I would as soon turn a lot of 



sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early mass 
to bring down the surpliced boys and the 
chanting novices. I tell you, O race of 
good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, 
whom God holds directly responsible for 
the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful 
world, you are no more fit for the training 
of immortal souls than a hawk is fitted to 
teach music to a thrush. You ought to have 
had a bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. 
That your boys develop into brutes and go 
to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end 
of a rope eventually, is nobody's fault but 
your own. If you chance to own a horse 
or a dog you show some care in its training, 
but God gives you a boy and you let him 
run wild. There is no more reason why a 
boy should be cruel than that a properly- 
broken colt should kick. The tendency 
may have been born with him, but good 
training eliminates it to a great extent, if 
not entirely. When I was a woman and 
lived at home, in the happy days before I 
entered the arena to fight for bread and but- 
ter, to say nothing of shoe leather and fuel, 
I used to gather the village boys about me 
every spring and try to sow the good seeds 

of tenderness with one hand, while carefully 
7 



98 ^0&]^tnavt3 anh ^xxe^ 

eliminating the tares with the other. I of- 
fered prizes for the best record at the end 
of the summer. I formed classes, the mem- 
bership of which pledged themselves, to a 
boy, to abstain from sling-shots, to cultivate 
the birds' nests and to withhold their hands 
from the commission of a single deed of 
cruelty. Many is the gallon of ice-cream 
I have paid for to keep those youngsters 
in the narrow path of rectitude, and many 
is the time that I have patroled the woods 
with my boy comrades, keeping watch over 
the family of a blue-bird or a robin, when the 
alarm went forth that some unregenerate 
boy was on the rampage. All the boys 
whom I could get to join the club I was sure 
of, for I know the way to a boy's heart, if I 
can only get the chance at him. For what 
other purpose did nature turn me out a born 
cook? And why did she make me a master 
hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I 
have a large and undying faith in the boys, 
if you will only start them right. The first 
thing a boy needs is a good mother . He 
can get along without a father — and I was 
going to say without a God — for the first 
few years of his life, but he needs a mother. 
Not a mere nurse maid to look after his 



^00i^tnav^ anb ^uje* 99 

clothes and see that he has plenty to eat 
at the right intervals, but a good, sweet, 
companionable mother, with a good, soft 
breast for him to cry on and two arms to 
hug him with. He needs a mother who 
can talk with him and answer his questions, 
who is not stern and severe, but responsive 
and get-at-able. With such a mother our 
boys will be gentle and our birds will be 
safe. 

Try to think, boys, what a world this 
would be without any robins, or larks, or 
thrushes; without any songs in the apple 
trees getting all tangled up with the sun- 
shine and the blossoms; without any ca- 
naries to sing in the window, or any meadow 
larks to whip out their flutes among the clo- 
ver heads. If you should wake up some 
morning and experience the ghastly silence 
of a songless world you would want to hire 
somebody to thrash you that you ever used 
a sling-shot. Do you remember the minis- 
ter down New York way whom they fined 
for shooting robins? I never wanted to get 
up on a mountain top so much in all my 
life and shout glory as I did over that ver- 
dict. I have heard of immorality among 
ministers, and I have heard of hypocrisy 



100 ^o&ietnavi^ anb Jlu^* 

and lying and all sorts of offenses against 
good taste and morals, but I never heard 
of anything so contemptibly and causelessly 
mean as for one of God's especial teachers 
to get up in the morning, put on top boots, 
cross the river in the sunshine and dew of 
early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate 
aim and bring down a robin. If I was the 
Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not 
to blame sometimes when their blood gets 
too warm and they do impetuous things, but 
to deliberately descend to the ignominy of 
shooting a robin and calling it sport is to 
sink too low for justification. 

Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. 
If you must sail in and fight, if your super- 
fluous zeal is too much for you, go out in 
the field and square off at a bull. There is 
some glory in whipping anything bigger and 
stronger than yourself, but to show fight 
to a bird is a little too much like sneaking 
out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. 
I am going to write down a verse for you 
to write in your copy books this very day, 
and then good-night to you : 

"The bravest are the tenderest; 
The loving are the daring." 



^O0^tnavi^ ant> ^w^* loi 



Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose 
around again? And the daffodils? And 
the hyacinths? Last night I went home with 
a rose in my button which cost me just five 
cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining 
from anything more expensive than a ten- 
cent lunch, one can go on wearing roses un- 
til next November. The robins have come 
back, too, and this morning a couple of them 
awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The 
indications are that they are prospecting for 
spring housekeeping. If the cat kills them 
I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes 
and do the deed in the name of mercy, for I 
detest cats, both two-legged and four- 
legged, and I love robins both feathered and 
human. 



I wonder why it is that the average 
woman can walk and talk, breathe and 
laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be 
buried, and all the way through make such 
a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall 
in love, so many of us, just on the verge of 



102 ^jcr^^mtttry antf ^u^* 

a life that opens like a summer's day, and 
change that life thereby, as a June morning 
is changed when great clouds rush into the 
sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so 
proud to parade an engagement ring upon 
their finger, when the diamond is too often 
the danger-light thrown out above the 
breakers? Now and then, about as rarely as 
one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds 
an enchanted swan circling over the duck 
pond, there is a happy marriage — at least 
such is the popular inference — as to the ab- 
solute certainty of the statement, ask the 
skeleton closet. I have lived a varied sort of 
life. I have wandered to and fro over the 
earth to some extent; I have known a great 
many people, and have found happiness in 
many ways, but looking back over all the 
path to-night and turning my little bull's-eye 
lantern of experience up to the present mo- 
ment, I can neither remember nor record a 
dozen truly happy marriages. What consti- 
tutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? 
Content. Who is contented? Not you and 
not I. What man or woman of all whom we 
know can we bring out into the full light 
of day and say of them, "Behold the con- 
tented one! The restful one! The happy 



^0&^mavvi antf glu:e* io3 

pair!" You, my dear, have attained the am- 
bition of your youthful dreams. You have 
married a man who dresses you splendid- 
ly, who gives you diamonds and never mur- 
murs when the bills come in. But are you 
happy? Do you never walk to and fro with 
the restless countess in the sad old ballad, 
dreaming of "Alan Percy?" Do you never, 
when all is still, go down into that cemetery 
where life's "might have beens" lie buried 
in graves kept green forever with your tears, 
and walk and dream alone? And you, my 
friend, have married the man of your choice. 
Is there nothing in the handsome exterior 
that palls a bit now and then when you find 
how sordid and meager the soul is behind 
the smile you used to think so charming? 
Do you never find scorn creeping into your 
heart in place of adoration when you mark 
the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor 
that strew his idle way? And you, sir, have 
a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls 
you a lucky fellow. How many know of the 
sharp tongue that underlies her laughter and 
the feather-filled head that never yet has do- 
nated an earnest thought to the domestic 
economy? And you, my good sir, have mar- 
ried a blue stocking in the old acceptance 



104 ^o^^maru txnlf ^we* 

of the term. She can swing off a leader 
or make a speech on a rostrum at short no- 
tice, but how would you like to rise right up 
here, poor dear, and tell just what comfort 
lies in being mated to a superior being who 
busies herself with work which shall be re- 
membered perhaps when the dust on the 
center table, the holes in your stockings, the 
discomfort of the larder, and the untidiness 
of the household are forgotten? And you, 
my good fellow, have married a woman of 
"good form." She never does an indiscreet 
thing. She is "icily faultless" and splendidly 
stupid. She has the neck of a swan, the 
arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, 
and the soul of a mouse! The scent of a 
wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears 
to you, old comrade, when you look back 
across the years and see again the sweet 
dead face of one you trifled with, or whom 
you deserted for this woman with heart and 
body of snow, a purse filled with gold and 
a brain filled with feathers. 



^ 



There is entire hopelessness to many 
women in the blank monotony of life after 



^0&i^tnavvi atib ^w^* 105 

youth is past. An emotional nature, mercu- 
rial and restless, full of aspirations and long- 
ings, as the trees this perfect month are full 
of blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a 
thousand blooms to one fruition, finds the 
destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, 
and often longs for death that shall end all. 
Because poverty grinds and hosts of menial 
duties accumulate, because the walls of an 
unquiet home, made unlovely perhaps by 
skeletons that no skill can quite conceal, 
close like a dungeon upon hope and all the 
sweet promises of youth, bright natures 
grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill 
into apathy and gloom, and sunny brows 
darken under the cloud of almost perpetual 
irritability and discontent. It is useless to 
preach sermons to such cases — as useless 
as to read a book of etiquette in a prison 
ward or comfort the victims of a railroad dis- 
aster with a treatise upon reform in the 
management of roads. The worn, the 
wasted, the erring, and the cruelly maimed 
lie thick about us. Our business is to en- 
courage, to love, to bind up, and cheer. 
God, in His own time, shall lift the discon- 
tented head above the power of conspiring 
cares to vex. It is for us to lend a helping 



106 Jlxx^^tnttru <^it^r ^«^* 

hand down here where the "slough of de- 
spond"is deepest. When tides forget to obey 
the moon, or leaves to answer the will of the 
wind, then, and not sooner, shall these rest- 
less hearts of ours learn to be still, whatso- 
ever destinies confront, or limitations 
thwart. In looking upon the lives of some 
women, the mother of six children, for in- 
stance, who takes boarders and keeps no 
help ; the widow supporting her little brood 
by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted 
woman in whom the frolicsomeness and wit 
of girlhood die hard amid the sordid mis- 
eries of a poverty-stricken life ; the sensitive, 
poetic soul, doomed to uncongenial com- 
panionships and the criticisms and ridicule 
of the unfriendly — I am reminded of the 
score of eagles I saw lately, chained in a 
dusty inclosure of Central Park. With 
cHpped wings, and grand, homesick eyes, 
they sat disconsolate upon their perches, 
and moped the hours away. Would any 
sane being have reviled those sorry beings 
for a lack of spirit? Would not the gentle- 
hearted spectator have proffered a handful 
of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in 
pity that sympathy could do no more? 
For these unhappy sisters of mine, the dis- 



contented, yearning "Marthas," troubled 
with many cares, wherever my letter may 
find them between the great seas, I have a 
word of comfort in my heart to-day. In the 
first place, do not think, because you so 
often fall into irritability and impatient 
speech, that God despises you as a sinner. 
He understands, if friend, husband, or 
neighbor do not. Strive not to yield to 
fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, 
remember always God understands it all. 
You may be able to see no light in all the 
shrouded way, no Hfting of the shadow, no 
promise of the dawn; but rest assured, how- 
ever long the probation, the infinite content 
of Heaven awaits us very soon, if we strive 
as much as lies within us to overcome the 
infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces 
set towards the shining of His love. I know, 
dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and 
to-morrow are just alike to hopeless fancy — 
full of dish-washing, and drudging, and 
back-bending toil — that the sparkle and 
song of life were long ago merged in the 
humdrum beat of treadmill years; but 
through just this test is your character 
building — through just its hard process is 
shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with 



108 ^O0j^nttxvvi ixnlCf ^ne* 

splendid light. As the root tarries in the 
dark mold to burst by-and-by into radi-, 
ant bloom above it, so your poor life is 
hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are 
not wicked because you sometimes murmur, 
but try and think so much of what is going 
to be that you shall forget what is. The 
Tender Heart above absolves your beaten 
spirit from willful sin, though you are some- 
times swept away on currents of doubt and 
unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed 
upon the headlight of His love, whatever 
currents drift you away. Remember how hu- 
man parents deal with their children, and 
learn a lesson of God's dealings. If my lit- 
tle girl has the ear-ache, or any other tor- 
menting ailment of childhood, do I stand 
over her and exact songs and smiles? And 
do you think that when God, for some good 
reason of his own, lays heavy burdens upon a 
life. He is going to demand unswerving 
sweetness of speech or ethereal mildness of 
temper? When I see one scrubbing who 
was fitted to adorn the drawing-room, wash- 
ing dishes who was created an artist or a 
genius, darning small boys' linsey pants 
and homespun stockings who was intended 
by nature to reign the crowned priestess of 



^o^etnavi^ anb ^u^* 109 

some high vocation; when I mark the fur- 
rows and zigzag footprints that an army of 
besieging cares have left on the cheek that 
in girlhood outblushed the wayside rose, or 
note how the hands that once drew divinest 
music from obedient keys have twisted and 
warped in the performance of homely duties, 
I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek with 
a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor 
hands in a reverent grasp, for I tell you, 
however often she may faint and falter by 
the way, however "fretty," and worn, and 
peevish she may become, the woman who 
perseveres in the performance of uncon- 
genial duties, who struggles through the 
flatness of monotonous drudgeries, con- 
quering adverse circumstances, poverty, and 
destiny, by patience, love, and Christian 
faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs 
and saints. Remember, I am not talking to 
women who find the burdens hard to bear 
and do not bear them ; to mere whimperers, 
who, because the road is full of stones, sit 
down and refuse to travel ; but to the brave, 
true hearts who "press onward" although no 
rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to 
faithfully perform the task of life, hoping 
that the fullness of time shall read the riddle 



110 ^0&ietnavvi antf ^i«* 

of incongruous destiny. I have seen the 
time when household work seemed newly 
cursed — the very dew of the primal maledic- 
tion upon it; when to charge upon the 
dinner dishes, attack the lamps, or descend 
into the vortex of family patching, seemed 
to call for greater courage than average hu- 
man nature possessed. And when I imagine 
that shrinking carried on through dry years 
of monotonous experience, the same formu- 
las to be observed, the same distaste to be 
overcome throughout a lifetime of toil, yet 
no duty shirked, no obligation set aside, I 
wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright 
for such faithful lives. 



^ 



The time of the year for violets and also 
for tramps is drawing near. Did you ever 
stop and think just what it means to be a 
tramp? It means no work, no money, no 
home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all 
the world to care whether you live or die like 
a dog by the roadside. It means no heaven 
for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide 
them out of sight and no hand stretched out 
in all the world to give the greeting and the 



good-by of love. It means nobody in all the 
world to feel any interest in you and no 
spot in all the world to call your own, not 
even the mud wherein your vagrant foot- 
print falls, no prospect ahead, and no link 
unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell 
you, when we sit down and figure out just 
what the term means, it will not be quite so 
easy next time the wretched tramp calls at 
our door to set the dog upon him or turn him 
empty-handed away. Let them work, you 
say. Look here, my good friend, do you 
know how absolutely impossible a thing it is 
getting to be in this overcrowded country for 
even a willing man to find work? It used to 
be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs 
far outnumber the days in free America. I 
know well educated, competent men who 
have been out of employment for months 
and years. I know brave and earnest women, 
with little children to support, who have 
worn beaten paths from place to place seek- 
ing, not charity, but honest employment, 
and failed to find it. What chance is there 
for a ragged tramp when such as these fail? 
Remember, once in a while, if you can, that 
the most grizzled and wretched tramp that 
ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave 



112 ^a^^ntarjj attlf ^u^* 

was once a child and cradled in arms per- 
haps as fond as those that enfolded you and 
me. Remember that your mother and his 
were made sisters by the pangs of maternal 
pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which 
the saintly eyes of your mother are watching 
for you his mother is looking out for him. 
Perhaps — who knows? — the footfall of the 
ragged and despised tramp shall gain upon 
yours and find the gate of deliverance first, 
in spite of your money and your pride. 



^ 



THE BROOK. 

Lifting its chalice of sun-kiseed foam 

Far up the heights where the wild winds roam. 

Weaving a web of shadow and sheen 

In lowland meadows of dewy green. 

Murmuring over the mossy stones, 
In cool green dells where the gold bee drones, 
Sudden and swift the showery fall. 
Startling the wood bird's madrigal. 

Orbing itself in a crystal lake 
Set round with thickets of tangled brake. 
In waveless calm, an emerald stone. 
In the lap of the dusky forest thrown. 



^00etnavvi anh ^u^^ 113 

Silver flakes of tremulous light 
Showering down from the fields of night, 
Where the great white stars like lilies glow — 
Tossed on its tide as feathery snow. 

Hastening onward through troubled ways. 
Forgotten for aye its woodland days, 
Sullen and silent its banks beside 
The free brook wanders, a mighty tide. 

Beyond where the forest's purple rim 
Belts the horizon, hazy and dim, 
Thundering down from the frowning steeps, 
Into the arms of the sea it leaps. 



^ 



Did it ever strike you, I wonder, this 
marvel of our individuality? Alone we are 
born, alone we live, alone we die, alone we 
pay the penalty or reap the reward of our 
evil or well doing. In the troubles that as- 
sail us we stand singly, however many coun- 
cillors may flock to the door of our tent. 
Not one in all the world, the nearest, the 
dearest or the best, can bear one pang of 
life's experience for us, love us as they may. 
We often hear a mother say: "My child 
is so headstrong; she will not take my ad- 
vice ; she will go her own way." Of course 

8 



114 ^0&jetnavvi an^ ^ne* 

she will, and she will not, simply because in- 
dividual tact is the law of all experience. It 
is not being headstrong, it is merely ful- 
filling destiny. 

In the fight we wage we do not fight by 
platoons or squads, under a common leader, 
a thousand at a charge. We enter the lists 
one by one and fight single handed. We 
choose our own colors and there is little of 
pageantry or show. When we fall we fall 
as travelers disappear who walk across a 
coast that is honeycombed with quicksand. 
We vanish, not in crowds like men who are 
jostled out of life by earthquakes or flooded 
like rats by tidal waves, but we slowly suc- 
cumb to the inevitable in solitudes where 
only the stars watch us and the spaces of a 
dim, unsounded sea catch the fret of our 
mortal moan. 

I have always thought that I should love 
to have the world come to an end, with a 
grand final bang, while I was yet living and 
sentient on the surface. I would like to be 
flashed out of being in the conglomerate of 
a mighty swarm, like the covey of birds a 
huntsman's rifle brings down or the multi- 
tude a Pompeiian doom overtakes. Such 
dying would be like riding out of an elec- 



^a^^ntartj anh ^u^* us 

trie-lighted station, by the car full, rather 
than sneaking a place on the back platform 
like a tramp. But after all, death would not 
lose its awful individuality even then. Mar- 
shal the whole world, and aim a single bul- 
let at a hundred million souls, with power to 
still use each pulse beat in the same rifle 
flash of time, yet each man would die alone. 
There is one final lesson to be gained 
through the doleful contemplation of the 
world's flood-tide of sorrow, and that is the 
lesson of how to bear our troubles so as to 
react as little as possible upon those with 
whom life throws us in daily contact. Be- 
cause the gobhn bee has stung our own 
souls, shall we seek to share the pain of its 
stateless sting with all we meet? No more 
than we should endeavor to carry contagion 
in our garments or put poison in our neigh- 
bor's well. I knew a man once, a gallant, 
light-hearted soldier, who honored the blue 
and brass of his country's uniform by wear- 
ing it. An awful sorrow suddenly smote his 
life, like an Indian sortie from an ambush. 
Wife and children were swept from his 
arms by a swift disaster and he was left 
alone. His friends said: "He is a wrecked 
man! He will never lift his head again!" 



116 ^00^ntaru antr ^ue^ 

How did he fulfill this prophecy of woe? He 
entered the chamber of his darkened home 
and denied himself to everyone. He neither 
ate nor slept. He fought by himself a great- 
er battle than call of bugle ever summoned 
to any field. He mastered his own soul, 
and emerged from that chamber after a 
certain number of days a conqueror over 
his own sorrow. His smile was as ready, 
his heart as tender, his genial speech as wel- 
come at home and abroad as it had ever 
been, and only when the gobhn bee of mem- 
ory stung him in the silence of the compan- 
ionless night did he live over again the ex- 
perience of his sorrow. None knew when 
that sting came, or how it tarried; he bore 
it silently like a soldier and a man. The 
trifling world called him light of love and 
easily consoled, but I think he was a grand, 
unselfish hero, a benefactor rather than a 
destroyer of mankind. 

When we get so that we can hide our sor- 
row in a smile we attain that attitude that 
brings us closest to the divine. The man or 
the woman who goes up and down the ways 
of the world with a groan on his lips and a 
weed on his arm is an infliction worse than 
an out of tune hand organ. If the bee 



^00i^tnavvi anh ^w«* ii7 

stings, hold still and bear the hurt by your- 
self as best you may, but don't talk it over 
with everyone you meet, like an old woman 
petitioning a recipe for a bad cough and 
flaunting her physical ailments forever in 
your face. When you have bright things to 
talk about and comforting things to say, 
talk; otherwise hold your peace. The rea- 
son, I think, why animals are never wrinkled 
and drawn of feature and gray like mankind 
is because they cannot talk. If they had the 
power of speech they would go around as 
humans do and disseminate unpleasant top- 
ics, as idle winds start thistle pollen. Silence 
is golden when you can find nothing bet- 
ter to do than to clamor your own troubles ; 
speech only is blessed when, like a bird, it 
evolves a song or wings a feathered hope. 

It seems hardly the thing to do, perhaps, 
to single out the unhappy folks in a present 
world so full of jollity and talk with them 
awhile to-day. This bright autumn weather 
is so crowded with sights and sounds to 
dazzle and enchant that to obtrude the leaf 
of rue within the garland or breathe a 
minor tone into the music seems almost out 
of place. And yet, for some reason or other, 
as I sit here at my desk to-day, the thought 



118 ^o&ietnavt^ antf ^we* 

of the hearts that are heavy in the midst of 
all the world's fair pageant, and the eyes 
that cannot see the banners by reason of 
their tears, come to me with a strong and 
resistless force. 

Alas, for the goblin bee that stings, yet 
all too often may not "state its sting" ! We 
walk with a crowd, and yet are conscious 
that our w^ay is not theirs. It lies apart, 
we know not why, and evermore dips into 
shadow and threads the dark defiles of 
gloom. There are so many more reasons 
for being sorry than for being glad, we 
think. Try to count the causes for laugh- 
ter, and then, over against them, set the 
reasons for sorrow and see which way the 
balance falls. I take my seat on a bench 
out at the big show and watch the crowd 
for an hour. Do I see many faces that do 
not bear the scar of the "goblin bee"? From 
the little four-year-old who is bitterly cry- 
ing because somebody has jostled its toy 
from its hand, to the woman whose eyes are 
sunken with sorrow because death has 
jostled the one whom she loved into his 
grave, everybody who passes, with but few 
exceptions, shows the scar of that stateless 
sting. 



^Cf&i^tnavvi anb ilu^* ii9 



Look at my window-garden, yonder! 
The sunshine, stealing in from the south, 
has wooed a dozen pansies into bloom — 
"Johnny-jump-ups," they used to call them 
when I was a girl. How bright and cheery 
and chatty they look. We have those sort 
of faces (some of us) every day about our 
breakfast tables. The little folks, God bless 
'em! with their shining hair, their bright 
eyes, and the soft velvet of their cheeks, are 
the blessed heartsease of our home. And 
there is a fuchsia, turbaned like a Turk, be- 
hind the pansies. Just such sumptuous, 
graceful women we see every day. Like the 
fuchsia, they are beautiful and that is all. 
They yield no fragrance. They attract the 
eye but fail to reach the heart. Who 
wouldn't rather have ^mignonette growing 
in the window? There is a yellow blossom 
in the window that reminds one of the pa- 
tient shining of certain homely souls I know, 
making sunshine in humble homes; cheer- 
ful old maid aunts, sweet-hearted elder sis- 
ters, yielding the honey of their hearts to 
others. A cluster of fading violets sets me 



120 ^o^etnavvi anb |lu^* 

thinking of frail invalids and the host of 
"shut-in" ones, whose delicate and dying 
beauty fills our eyes with unstayed tears and 
our hearts with the shadow of coming sor- 
row. 



There are gates that swing within your 
life and mine from day to day, letting in rare 
opportunities that tarry but a moment and 
are gone, like travelers bound for points re- 
mote. There is the opportunity to resist 
the temptation to do a mean thing; improve 
it, for it is in a hurry, like a man whose ticket 
is bought and whose time is up. It won't 
be back this way, either, for opportunities 
for good are not like tourists who travel on 
return tickets. There is the opportunity to 
say a pleasant word to your wife, sir, or you, 
madam, to your husband, instead of venting 
your temper and your "nerves" upon each 
other. Love's opportunity travels by light- 
ning express and has no time to dawdle 
around the waiting-room. If you improve 
it at all it must be while the gate swings to 
let it through. 



^a^^mat^U anh $lu^* 121 

My dear, let me implore you, whatever 
else you let go, hold on to your enthusiasm. 
Grow old if you must; grow white-headed 
and bent and care-furrowed, if such must 
needs be the process of years, but don't grow 
to be a stick. If you must pass on from the 
green time of your freshness, change into 
sweet hay and keep your fragrance. If the 
cage must grow rusty and lose its bright- 
ness, there is a bird within, that it were a 
pity to strangle to keep it from singing to 
the end. I don't care how successful, or 
rich, or learned a man becomes, if he main- 
tains a grim repression of all romance and 
enthusiasm, and what some hard old 
"Gradgrinds" call the "nonsense" within 
him, he is nothing more than a fine cage 
with a dead bird in it. When I hear a per- 
son say of another, "Oh, he is a substantial 
fellow; no nonsense about him!" I picture 
a gold-fish in a glass globe. A glittering 
cuticle that covers anything so bloodless as 
the anatomy of a fish is not worth much. 
There are a good many types of men to be 
detected, but the bloodless, emotionless, 
heart-paralytic, is the worst. Polish up a 
golden ball all you like. It may ornament 
your mantel, or serve as a useless bit of 



122 ^jcr^^maru ttnb ^ne* 

glitter in some corner, but when you begin 
to feel hungry and faint, and in need of so- 
lace and cheer, you will turn from the golden 
ball and pick up the veriest old rusty coat 
apple from an orchard's windfall, that has 
mellowed under summer noon, and sweet- 
ened in summer rains and dews, praising 
God for its flavor and its juices, even if you 
can buy forty bushels of its counterpart, for 
the price of one of your polished golden 
balls. Cultivate the "nonsense" in you, 
then, if it tends to enthusiasm of the right 
sort. It is the sympathy we get from peo- 
ple, the heartsomeness and cheer that keep 
our souls nourished, rather than the mere 
dazzle of intellectual attainment, or the 
greatness of any worldly achievement. 
Heart rather than head ; nature rather than 
art; genuineness rather than pretense; ro- 
mance rather than absolute reaHsm; enthu- 
siasm rather than petrifaction, will make a 
man rather than a gold fish, a juicy apple 
rather than a ball of metallic and glittering 
nothingness. 



We were gathered at the Norfolk Sta- 
tion awaiting the train that was to carry us 



^OiSietnavvi anb ^w^* 



123 



over the marshes to Virginia Beach and the 
sea. The crowd that surrounded us was 
very different from a Chicago crowd. There 
was no pushing, no bold assertiveness, no 
elbows. There were lots of pretty women, 
and as for me everybody knows I simply 
adore the open sky, a tree in blossom and a 
pretty woman. There were young girls with 
velvety brown eyes within whose dusky 
shadows one might look fathom deep as in- 
to a well of limpid water; girls with blue 
eyes Hke fringed gentians; women with 
grand free curves of figure that would have 
made Hebe look commonplace; women with 
shapely shoulders and long, aristocratic 
hands, tinted at the finger-tips as though 
fresh from picking ripe strawberries; girls 
all in white (for the day was warm), like 
June lilies; women with snowy teeth and 
adorable smiles to disclose them; little tots 
of girls with braided hair and soft, question- 
ing eyes ; queenly girls, like tulips in bloom, 
all chatting together in subdued but merry 
tones and laughing as deUcately and airily 
as thrushes sing. Oh, I lost my heart to 
you, my pretty southern maidens, and count 
the time well spent I devoted to the contem- 



124 ^o&jetnav^ antf ^xxe^ 

plation of your many graces away down in 
that little station by the torrid bay. 



If I was a liar and wanted to reform I 
shouldn't quit lying all at once. I would 
start out with a covenant to occasionally tell 
the truth. By and by this spasmodic truth- 
telling, like the grain blown by the wind 
among stones, would, perhaps, yield suf- 
ficient harvest to send me not quite empty- 
handed up to St. Peter's gate. If I drank 
whisky I would commence to reform by 
swearing ofif on one glass out of three, and 
perhaps the manhood within me, having so 
much more chance to grow, would elbow its 
way into heaven. If I was a gossip I would 
try to hold my tongue from speaking evil 
half the time, and in that blissful interval 
perhaps my dwarfed soul would get a start 
skyward. It is not by sudden achievement 
that we consummate a long journey. It is 
step by step and mile by mile over a stony 
road that brings us to the goal, and it is 
not by mere resolving that we renounce the 
old and attain unto the new. He who travels 
but a few steps and keeps his face heaven- 



ward is on the way, and every small decision 
for the right, faithfully adhered to, is a no- 
table step toward a consummated journey. 



I am often struck with the selfishness dis- 
played by people who are fortunate enough 
to be provided with umbrellas in time of sud- 
den showers. They calmly behold hosts of 
unhappy beings battling their way through 
the storm, drenched to the bone, and with 
ruined garments, yet never think of saying, 
"Accept a share of my umbrella," or "Walk 
with me as far as our ways He together." 
If I should hear such a speech I might drop 
senseless with surprise, but all the same I 
should hail it as the bugle note that heralded 
a new era of courteous kindness. 

We are not put into the world to be sus- 
picious of one another. We were put here to 
make the world pleasanter for our tarrying, 
and to cultivate a fellowship with souls. If 
the guests at a mountain inn, sojourning to- 
gether for a stormy night, spend the time in 
reviling one another, or in calling attention 
to each other's blemishes, we write them 
down as snobs; but what shall we call the 
tenants of transitory time who spend the 



126 ^00ictnavi^ antr ^uje* 

span of mortal life in doing all they can to 
make one another uncomfortable? We have 
only a watch in the night to tarry together ; 
let us try to make that hour a profitable one 
and a pleasant memory for others when we 
have journeyed on. 

I have often wondered how Christian peo- 
ple got round the gospel command, "Love 
thy neighbor as thyself." It doesn't say 
love him (or her) after a proper introduction, 
or if agreeable, or congenial, or of good 
family and established reputation — it sim- 
ply gives the command on general princi- 
ples. I don't pretend to be good enough to 
obey the mandate myself, for I honestly 
think it is a species of hypocrisy to say you 
love everybody. One might as well say one 
were fond of all fruit alike, whether specked, 
wormy or rotten. But let my good orthodox 
professor put this in his pipe and smoke it. 
Let him remember it next time he sees his 
neighbor plunged into an extremity, or han- 
dicapped by an annoyance of any kind. If 
we love our neighbor we are bound to help 
him, and neighbor in this sense means any- 
one who chances to be near us, whether 
black or white, raggedly disreputable or 
sanctimoniously frilled. 



There is more selfishness perpetrated in 
the world under guise of family ties than in 
almost any other way. The man who does 
good and unselfish deeds only for his own 
children and for the immediate circle housed 
beneath his roof, forgetful of the claims of 
the great, tormented, harassed and strug- 
gling world, is a selfish man and account- 
able to heaven for a great deal of mean- 
ness. I don't care how much he puts on his 
children's backs, or how many luxuries he 
surrounds them with, the Lord will not hold 
him guiltless if he does nothing for the 
stranger who tugs by him in the stress of 
life's uncertain weather, or for the neighbor 
who sits disconsolate outside his gates. 

I wish that vagabond and his dog who 
were brought before a west side justice yes- 
terday for vagrancy would travel up my 
way. I like that sort of thing that leads a 
man to be faithful to his dog. It goes with- 
out saying that the dog is faithful to the 
man, but it is not often that the master 
shows the same spirit to the fond and stead- 
fast brute. If the two should journey my 
way I think they would have one white day 
in the calendar. Good heavens, my dear, do 
you ever stop long enough in the midst of 



128 ^o^etnavvi anb ^u^* 

your golf-playing and your tennis tourna- 
ments, your yachtings and your outings to 
think what it is to be a tramp? To be unable 
to find a stroke of work; to be sick and 
starved and homeless ! Like "poor Joe," to 
be told to "move on" every time you stop to 
rest; to eat the grudgingly given crust of 
charity, and have no friend under the sun, 
moon or stars but a flea-bitten dog? Did 
you ever stop to think, my Christian friend, 
that that tramp is a neighbor whom you are 
to love? And if you are going to love him 
I will love his dog! No doubt the latter is 
the better man of the two. 



Did you ever read of a battle siege in 
olden times? There were the full-armored 
warriors, resplendent in shining metal and 
plumed crests; there were the mighty 
battering rams, and the flash of battle axes, 
the thunder of advancing feet and the trum- 
pet call before the gates. But more potent 
than all else in the doomed city's destruc- 
tion was the secret work of the sappers and 
miners — the patient forces which wrought 
their work out of sight and hearing. And 



I have been thinking to-night, as I sit here, 
where the firehght weaves its deHcate tapes- 
try within the beautiful walls of home, that 
it is not going to be the pompous ones who 
shall march triumphant at last into the "City 
of Gold," but they who have worked pa- 
tiently and humbly out of sight and with 
no meed of praise. The man who has held 
to the dictates of his own conscience, not 
conforming to the company he marched 
with; the man who has dared to be himself 
in a world where men are labeled in lots; 
the man who has held it high honor to sufifer 
for a principle or to be loyal to an unpopular 
friend or cause ; the man who has erected a 
standard made up between his own heart 
and heaven, and, independent of the world's 
verdict of praise or blame, followed it to 
the end, is going to wear a crown by and 
by, when the epauletted general and the 
pompous staf¥ are forgotten. Prayer is not 
always a genuflexion and an address. It is 
oftener hard work. The farmer praying at 
his weeds, the pilot praying from every 
spoke of his wheel, the mother whose daily 
life of unselfish toil and far-reaching influ- 
ence is a prayer, do 'more to stir the divine 

heart, to keep the world's prow headed for 
9 



130 



^Cf&^tnavvi anb ^we* 



heaven than half the solicitations or apolo- 
getic addresses made in our churches under 
the name of prayer. 



^ 



When you and I get rich, my dear, as 
some day we surely shall, what are we going 
to do with all our money? We will hunt up 
some of the improvident ones, those who 
could never make the two ends meet, those 
who through good heartedness, or lack of 
forethought or unselfish desire to make 
other folks happy, have never laid by a cent, 
and we will give those silly people such a 
good time they will carry its impress all 
through their after lives, as a pat of butter 
carries the print. We will slyly pay the 
bills for improvident ones who have grown 
gray in the efifort to make a decent funeral 
for dead horses. They shall forget how to 
spell "care" and their new and happy dia- 
lect shall know no such words as "monthly 
payments," "righteous dues" or "can't afford 
it." I am convinced that as a rule it is not 
the sweet-hearted people who take on this 
world's gain. There is many a poor beggar 
with not a change of linen to his back who 



^00«ntctru anb Jlu^* i3i 

would make a more royal host, had the 
smiling face of fortune turned his way, than 
the rightful owner of the vast estates at 
whose gate he stands and begs. The big 
hearts too often go with the empty purse, 
and the little, wizened, skin-flint souls, that 
it would take a thousand of to crowd the 
passage through the eye of a needle, gain all 
the golden favors of the god of plenty. 



After dinner I said to the little folks, "Be- 
hold, I will buy me a pair of stockings and 
hire a bathing suit, and the afternoon shall 
be devoted to froHc and thee." So we went 
to the small booth, where an exceedingly 
meek young man sold ginger pop and fancy 
shells, and paralyzed him with a demand for 
ladies' hose. He didn't know what we meant 
until I came out boldly and unblushingly 
and asked for women's stockings. He 
said he didn't keep 'em. "Have you a 
mother?" said I. "No." "Have you a sis- 
ter? Or is there a nearer one yet and a 
dearer, from whom I could buy or borrow 
a pair of stockings that I may go in bath- 
ing?" He didn't understand that either, but 



132 ^a^^emttr^ antf ^w^* 

finally, with the aid of ktcre, I made the 
matter clear so that he got me a pair of 
canary-striped woolen hose, evidently laid 
by for some farmer's winter use, and I 
bought them for a sum that made his eyes 
grow dim with rapture. We went down to 
the beach, and after a season of prayer with 
the young person to induce her to put on 
some horrid tights, we all went in and en- 
joyed such a dip as only salt water yields. 
In the midst of it we had to go on shore 
several times to stand the boy on his head 
and pump the ocean out of him, as he was 
constantly getting drowned in the surf, and 
one of my expensive and expansive stock- 
ings was captured out at sea and brought 
back by a son of BeHal, who seemed greatly 
affected by its size, but in spite of such small 
drawbacks we had a glorious time. 



"What is the matter, my darling?" asked 
John, the newly married, to the wife of his 
bosom. 

"Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. John. 

*'But you look like a funeral," exclaimed 
he. 



Jt00^ntarij anh ^ne* 133 

"I am not aware that I look more than 
usually unamiable; I certainly never felt 
better," replied his wife, placidly folding 
down meanwhile the hem to a distracting 
little apron she is making. John seizes his 
hat, pushes it down over his eyes and rushes 
forth distracted with the conjecture as to 
what terrible thing he has been guilty of to 
make his wife look so like an injured mar- 
tyr. For the time being love is dead, joy 
wiped from the face of the earth, hope cru- 
cified and peace assassinated, all because of 
bottled thunder. A word would have ex- 
plained all, a look has ruined everything. 

"Don't put on your fresh muslin this 
afternoon," suggests the prudent mother. 

"But why not?" repHed the sprightly Jane; 
"it is the only endurable dress this warm 
weather." 

"Oh, very well, do as you Hke, of course," 
meekly replied the parent in a tone that 
suggests a serpent's fang, a hoary head and 
a broken heart all in one. 

Now, in my opinion it is not conducive to 
domestic harmony to have too much of this 
sort of repression. It is like living in an 
exhaust chamber. One would be certain to 
choke up and burst very soon. Self-con- 



134 ^0&etnavi^ anb ^ne* 

trol does not consist in forever keeping 
one's mouth shut, alone. A look, a sneer, 
a drooping mouth, a tilted nose, will do as 
much mischief as a loosened tongue. Why 
I should go about like a disagreeable old 
martyr or like a sneering Saul of Tarsus, 
and call myself pleasant to live with, sim- 
ply because I don't talk, is something not 
easily understood. 

I would far rather be a target for flying 
saucepans every time I popped -my head 
into the kitchen than have a cook there 
who never says a word, but is sullen and 
ugly enough to carve me up like cold meat. 
I would rather be a constant attendant at 
funerals, a nurse in a fever-ward, a girl in a 
circus, or a street car horse, than live with 
proper folks who never make blunders, or 
commit indiscretions either of speech or 
manner, but look at you every time you 
sneeze as though your featherheadedness 
was the only thing that made life unbeara- 
ble. Out with it then if you have cause for 
offense. Don't let the clouds hang a single 
hour, but turn on the weather faucet and let 
it rain. If your neighbor has insulted you, 
either ask her why or ignore it. Ten to one 
the fancied insult is only a wind cloud, and 



sunshine will break it away. If you feel mad 
sail right in for a tempest and have done 
with it. Thunder and lighten, blow and 
hail if you want to, but don't be a non-com- 
mittal dog-day. Bottled thunder is a bad 
thing to keep on the family shelves. It is 
likely to turn sour on your hands, and before 
you get through with it, you will wish you 
had died young. 



Yonder goes a small and worthless yellow 
dog. He is young; you can tell that from 
the abnormal size of his paws, and a certain 
remnant of wistful trust in human kind, 
which displays itself in the furtive wag of his 
tail and the cock of his limp and discouraged 
ear. He is as absolutely friendless as any- 
thing to which God has granted life can be. 
Of his existence there is no thought in the 
mind of any man or woman beneath the 
stars. The boys grow mindful of him now 
and then, though, and their manifested in- 
terest has made of his life one terrible spec- 
ter of cringing fear. He hears the hurrah 
of their cruel chase in every tone of sudden 
speech; he sees the menace of a blow in 
every shadow. Do you know, my dear. 



136 ^0&^tnixvt^ txntf ^u^* 

that I never spoke a truer word in all my 
life than when I say that underneath the hide 
of that forlorn and friendless little yellow 
dog there is something more valuable than 
beats under the broadcloth vests and silken 
waists of many of the men and women who 
pass him by! A grateful heart mindful of 
the smallest kindnesses, a faithful instinct 
which keeps dogs loyal even to cruel mas- 
ters. I sometimes think I would rather 
take my chances with honest dogs than with 
half the men who own them. They may not 
be able to pass up the stamped ticket which 
transfers the human passenger from the 
earthly to the celestial railroad and carries 
him through on the passport of an immortal 
soul; but no ticket at all is quite as good as 
a forged or fraudulent one, as some of us 
will find out, I am thinking, when we hand 
up our worthless checks ! 



^ 



Which would you rather be in the orches- 
tra of human life, a flute or a trombone? 
To be sure, the latter is heard the farthest, 
but the quality of the flute tone reaches 
deeper down into the soul and awakens 
there dreams without which a man's life 



is like bread without leaven, or a laid fire 
without tinder. I don't Hke noisy people, 
do you? People who talk and bluster and 
swagger. People who remind us of blad- 
ders filled to the point of explosion with 
wind. We like sensitive people, quiet- 
voiced, deep-hearted, earnest people, 
with the quality of the flute rather than 
that of the fog-horn in their make-up. And 
yet how much greater demand there is for 
bluster than there is for force. Sometimes 
I am inclined to think that life is a farce 
played with an earthly setting for the de- 
lectation of the angels, as we serve minstrel 
shows and burlesques. It isn't the shy and 
the timid who get the applause; the clown 
in tinsel and the end man in cork divide 
easy honors. And yet, thank God for 
flutes! Thank God the orchestra isn't en- 
tirely composed of trombones and bass 
drums. 



WHAT I MISS. 

I can get used to my darling's dress 
That hangs on the closet door; 

And the little silent half-worn shoes 
That patter no more on the floor. 



138 lla^^ntctru ctntr ^me* 

I can get used to the hopeless blank 

That greets my waking eyes, 
As they meet the sight of the empty crib 

Where no little nestling lies. 

I can get used to the dreary hush, 
In the home which my darling blest 

With her prattling speech and her rippling 
laugh, 
Ere we laid her away to rest. 

But, ah! the touch of those little hands 

That wandered o'er my face. 
Like the wavering fall of rose-leaves soft. 

In some sunlit garden place. 

Those dimpled caressing baby hands! 

I feel them again at night. 
And in dreams I gather them back again 

From their harp in the City of Light. 

My hungry heart will claim them still; 

I cannot let them depart. 
So I gather them back again in dreams 

To my desolate, breaking heart. 



The other day my strolling took me into 
a second-hand furniture shop. I wanted to 
find an ice chest. "Have you any second- 
hand chests?" I asked of the hoary-headed 
son of Erin who tended the place and raked 



in the shekels. He didn't answer a word, 
but silently arose and beckoned me to fol- 
low. Through ranks of withered tables 
and bUghted chairs I picked my way until 
my guide dived down a gruesome stairway 
and then I stopped. Presently his head 
emerged like a grimy Jack-in-the-box. 

"Is it an ice chist yez want?" asked he. 
There was mold on his faded cheeks and a 
cobweb on his brow as he awaited my 
answer. 

"Must I go down there to find it?" I in- 
quired. He replied in the affirmative. 

"Old man, I will go no further," said I, 
"but come back here and tell me the price 
of this lovely desk." So saying, I desig- 
nated a delightful old claw-handled, brass- 
mounted, spider-legged piece of furniture, 
which might have been used by Adam to 
cast up his accounts on. There was a sug- 
gestion of secret drawers about it that was 
quite ravishing. The doors were oddly 
shaped little panes of mirror glass, within 
which I gazed pensively at a soot blemish 
on my nose. "Is it the price of that yez d 
be afther knowing?" said the old man, in 
the tone of one who dealt with a harmless 
lunatic. "I thought it was ice chists yez 



140 ^jcr^^mctrij anlf glu^* 

was afther." "Yes," said I, drawing out 
two long slabs as I spoke, such as were used 
to support the shelf of the desk I remem- 
bered in my grandmother's house. "That 
bit of fumichoor," said the old man, gazing 
sadly meanwhile at the grime of ages which 
I could not rub from ofif my nose, "is more 
than two hundred years old." He stopped 
for a moment to see if I would believe him, 
then went on: "Yis, ma'am, that same is 
nearer three hundred years old, all told." 

Here I gave him a look which stopped 
him at the threshold of the fourth century. 

" Yez may have it for $25," says he. 

"I'll give you five," says I. 

He turned away as one who found his 
mother tongue inadequate to express the 
deep-seated scorn of his soul. I followed. 

"Did yez say twenty?" he asked stopping 
abruptly and facing me with the blurred 
photograph of what was once an engaging 
smile. 

"I said five," I answered. 

"Well, take it thin," said he, "but it would 
be dirt chape at fifty. It's not a day less 
than four hun — " 

"Stop," said I, "if you add another cen- 
tury I'll only pay you two and a half for it." 



^o&j^tnav^ attlCf ilu-e* i4i 

And so to-night it comes to pass that I 
am writing at my new old desk. I am half 
conscious, as my pencil glides along the 
paper, of a laughing face, half-hidden by 
showers of falling hair, that flickers like a 
shadow in and out of the soft gloom that 
enfolds me. Fingers, light as air, seem to 
follow the motion of my own, and the ghost 
of the mistress who thought and wrote at 
this same desk, one, two, three, four hun- 
dred years ago, seems whispering in my ear. 
I wonder what will be the effect if I read to 
that sweet, gentle woman of "ye olden time" 
a few bits from the morning paper. 

Madam, are you aware that a man kicked 
his wife to death yesterday because she 
failed to have his supper ready for him? 
Are you not to be congratulated that you 
are out of reach of this latter day develop- 
ment of the human brute? Do you know 
that the Blank concerts began this last 
week, and that the melodies that throng 
the beautiful hall yonder on the avenue are 
like bands of singing angels charming a 
world's sorrows to rest? Do not the gentle 
caprices of the flutes and the swing of the 
fiddles make even you, flake of airy noth- 
ingness that you are! dance like a thistle- 



142 ^0&!^tnavt^ antr glujc* 

down in a summer breeze? Madam, do 
you know, and how does it affect you to 
know, that there are bargain sales in town 
where you can buy a gown for a song, and 
a pair of all-wool blankets for the worth of 
a dream? In your long time disembodied 
state have you yet reached a point, I wonder, 
when such news as this can no longer thrill 
a woman's heart? If so, madam, you are 
truly and undeniably dead, and your room 
is better than your company. I bid you a 
gentle good evening. 



Among the many things I shall be glad 
to find out some day will be why, in spite of 
heroic effort to keep it straight, my hat 
always gets crooked and my hair becomes 
disordered on the march. I thoroughly de- 
test the sight of a typical "blue-stocking," 
or a literary woman who affects a sublime 
superiority to appearances, and yet Mrs. 
Jellyby was nowhere as to general de- 
moralization of raiment compared to my 
unfortunate self. Taking my seat in a 
down-town restaurant the other day, I 
found myself surrounded by half a dozen 



girls as bright and pretty and jolly as girls 
go. No sooner was I seated than the whis- 
per went round that a newspaper woman 
had invaded the party. "Looks like one," 
murmured the plumpest one of the lot, and 
I could have cried. "Girls," I wanted to 
say, "judge not by appearances. The best 
christians sometimes have red noses, just 
as the j oiliest literary folks have frowsy hair 
and abandoned hats. They can't help it, my 
dears, any more than a black cat can help 
being somber. It is never safe to condemn 
anybody, not even a poor, miserable scrib- 
bler for the press, on circumstantial evi- 
dence. You see a crooked hat, electric 
hair, and that is all. Put on Titbottom 
spectacles and look deeper. Perhaps you 
will then see an anguish-stricken woman ris- 
ing at 5 a. m. to make herself smart for 
the day. You will note how carefully she 
adjusts the feeble adjuncts to her toilet, how 
she places her hat on straight and secures 
it with a cast-iron cable! How she combs 
out her curls and sticks a feathery kerchief 
within her belt. Two hours later the cable 
hat-pin has been struck by a tidal-wave and 
swept from its anchorage; the curls have 
degenerated into wisps of wind-tossed hay; 



144 ^o&jetnav^ antJr glu^* 

and the kerchief? Gone as a feather is 
gone when the summer te»mpest gets be- 
hind it! We mean well, girls. We want 
to look trim and slick and span. All of us 
poor literary people do, but we can't bring it 
about. Life is so everlastingly full, any- 
way, that it seems preposterous to spend 
more than half one's time in getting fixed 
up. Sometimes I am foohsh enough to be- 
lieve that good St. Peter, when we come 
toiling up to his gate, won't look so much to 
the condition of our hats and our hair as 
he will to the way we wear our souls. If 
they are tip-tilted and frowsy it may go a 
little bit hard with us. Of course, it is a 
good thing tO' be able to wear a hat straight, 
and be remarked for your pretty hair and 
generally pleasing appearance, but I declare 
to you if it comes to a question of mental 
array and soul-correction as opposed to 
style and good form, I am willing to choose 
the former and be laughed at now and then 
by saucy girls." 

I 

That's right. Stand on shore and beat 
him back when he attempts to make a land- 



^0&emav^ antf ^ne* 145 

ing. If necessary, club him under water 
and congratulate yourself that you are so 
self-righteous and everlastingly holy that 
nobody can get a chance to swing a club at 
you. What is this half-de.ad thing that is 
trying to force its way onto dry land from 
the whelming waters of temptation and 
misery? A rat? Oh, no; only a human 
creature like yourself. Sin overtaken and 
subdued by evil. He is young, perhaps, 
and never had a mother's care or a father's 
training. He has drifted with easy currents 
into dangerous waters, and the devil, who 
lurks beneath the flood, is trying to snatch 
him down to hell! Raise your club and 
give him a clip! The audacity of such a 
boy trying to be anything with such a rec- 
ord behind him ! Oh, I am sick of you all, 
you omniverous feeders on reputation, you 
unveilers of past records of shame! I hope 
in my heart that if ever you get your own 
foot on the threshold of some haven of 
relief, after a tight tussle with danger and 
death, an angel will stand over against 
the doorway with a flaming sword and de- 
mand to see your credentials. No hope of 
tliat, though. Angels are not up to that 
sort of work; it is left to men, and some- 
times — God pity us all ! — to women. 

10 



146 ^0sietnavis attii ^ns. 



w 



If you expect to escape criticism, girls, in 
this world, you will put yourselves very 
much in the plight of flower-roots that ex- 
pect to grow without the discipline of the 
hoe. Before we can amount to anything 
either in blossom or as fruit, we must un- 
dergo much honest criticism, and of such 
we need never be afraid. A candid and 
above-board enemy is of far -more benefit, 
often, than a timid friend, who, seeing our 
faults, is afraid to tell us of them. The fact 
that boys stone certain trees and pass others 
by, is explained when we find that the 
stones are always thrown at the fruit-bear- 
ing trees. And so with character; the fact 
that we are criticized proves that we are 
something better than scrub-oak saplings. 
But all criticism that does not make us 
grow, and put forth fairer and richer blos- 
soms, is like a hoe made of wood, or a cul- 
tivator without power applied to cause it 
to destroy the weeds. If the unanimous 
verdict of the community in which we live 
asserts that we are proud, or ill-natured, or 
lazy, we may be pretty sure that there is 



^xx^^ntctru an^ ^«^* 147 

some cause for the application of that par- 
ticular stroke of the hoe, and the sooner we 
set about seeking to remedy the evil, the 
better for our next world's crop of blos- 
soms. Nobody (save One) was ever yet 
maligned without some little cause. Those 
who come in contact with you at home may 
not see little blemishes upon your conduct 
or character which those who meet you 
in business may detect. For instance, to 
the folks at home you never put on that 
indifferent and languid air to which you 
treat the customer who drops in to buy 
ribbon, or the woman who asks you a ques- 
tion at your office desk. The customer and 
the questioner go away with an estimate 
of your behavior very unlike the one held 
at home, where you are frank and cheerful, 
and willing to please. And, on the other 
hand, the party with whom you associate 
casually in business, or with whom you ride 
daily to and from your office and your home, 
has no conception how snappy and snarly 
you can be when none but familiar ears are 
open to your surly complaints. 

The statement from your little brother or 
sister that you are a "cross old thing" would 
hardly be believed by those who meet you 



148 ^00ietnavvi an^ ^u^* 

away from home. And yet the hoe in the 
little hands strikes at a weed that threatens 
to make havoc in the garden. Better look 
to it, dearie, before the ugly thing quite 
overtops the mignonette and the pinks! 
Whenever you hear of an adverse criticism 
set to find the weed somewhere in your 
character. I believe firmly that every one 
of us was born into the world with capa- 
bilities for almost every evil under the sun 
if environment favors the development. 
Like a garden patch, the roots of the weeds 
lie already deep, the flower seeds must be 
sown. And no gardener ever struggled 
with "pusley" and burdock as we must strug- 
gle with the evil crop, heredity-sown. 
Thanks be to the quick eye, then, be it of 
friend or foe, who discerns the weed before 
we do, and whips out the hoe to attack 
it. We are not exactly pleased when it is 
borne in upon us through the criticism of 
some acquaintance or neighbor, that we are 
selfish in little things. Our folks don't say 
so, and we try to believe the charge is a 
libel. Next time you throw your banana 
skin heedlessly on the pavement, or crowd 
into a seat without a "by your leave," or 
refuse to move up in a crowded car, or 



^a^^marij antf glu^* 149 

open your window without asking if it be 
agreeable to the person behind you, or eat 
peanuts and throw the shucks on the floor 
instead of out of the window, or see a lady 
going by with a disarranged dress and don't 
tell her of it, or return an indifferent answer 
to a civil question, or refuse the sweet ser- 
vice of a smile and a gentle look to the hum- 
blest wayfarer that jostles you on the road, 
just remember the criticism, and see if there 
is not occasion for it. Set about correcting 
the little faults, and the great ones leave to 
God. He will keep you, no doubt, from theft, 
and murder, and perjury, but you don't 
ask or seem to stand in need of His help 
in getting rid of temptations to be mean and 
selfish, and discourteous and lazy. 

What would you think of a gardener who 
went about with a spade seeking to exter- 
minate nothing but Canada thistles, and let 
all the rest of the weeds go? It is not often 
that so big and determinate a thing as a 
Canada thistle gets in among the roses, and 
when it does it is quickly disposed of. But 
oh, the wee growths! The tiny shoots that 
come up faster than flies swarm in dog- 
days, and need to be forever stood over 
against with a steady hand and a hoe. If my 



150 ^O0jemaria: ctnlf |luje* 

neighbor comes out and charges me with 
stealing a barrel of flour from her store- 
house, or attacking her first-born with a 
meat-axe, I can quickly disprove that sort 
of a charge; but when she says that I am 
unprincipled because I steal in and coax her 
girl away from her with the ofifer of higher 
wages — how is that? Or that I am selfish 
because she sees me let my old mother wait 
on me to what I am able to get myself; 
or cross, because I am untender to the chil- 
dren; or untruthful, because I instruct the 
servant to say I am "not at home" when I 
am, how am I going to dispose of those 
charges? Sure as you live, there are weeds 
in front of such hoe strokes, and with heav- 
en^s help we'll get rid of 'em. 

Cultivate your critics, then, provided they 
be honest and fair-dealing. Avoid only 
such as strike in the dark. The man who 
goes out to hoe weeds in the night time is 
not to be trusted, and the enemy who resorts 
to the underhand methods of backbiting 
and scandal to do his work, is not worth 
talking about, much less heeding. Take 
criticism that is fair and open, as you occa- 
sionally take quinine, to tone up the system 
and dissipate the malaria of sloth and iner- 



tia. Only they shall come into the festival 
by and by, bearing garlands of roses, and 
wreaths of hearts' delight and balm, who 
have welcomed the strong stroke of the hoe 
at the root of every blossom to bear down 
the weeds and loosen the tough and sun- 
baked soil. 

As Charles Kingsley says : 

"My fairest child, I have no song to give you; 
No lark could pipe 'neath skies so dull and 
gray; 
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you 
For every day: 

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be 
clever; 
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long, 
And so make life, death and that vast forever 
One grand, sweet song." 



See that half-grown man? He never will 
know as much again as he does now at 
the ripe age of twenty. When he gets to 
be fifty, when his hair is grizzled and his 
hopes are like the dead leaves that cHng 
to November trees, he will look back upon 
these years of rare wisdom and colossal 



152 ^o&0tnavvi antf ^ue* 

effrontery and blush a little, perhaps, at the 
recollection. Now he has no reverence for 
a woman or for God. He sneers at good 
in a world whose threshold he has barely 
crossed, as a year-old child might stand in 
the doorway of his nursery and denounce 
what was going on in the drawing-room. 
Most of the scathing things that are said 
about domestic felicity, and the sneers that 
are bestowed on love, and the gibes that 
are flung at purity, and the scoffs that are 
launched at established rehgions; all the 
jokes at the expense of noble womanhood 
and the witticisms that are lavished upon 
the old-fashioned virtues, spring from the 
gigantic brain of the youth of the period. 



Often as I pass along the streets of this 
town I notice certain places which I do not 
burn down, nor tear down, nor otherwise 
demolish, merely because of inherent cow- 
ardice and inadequate strength. If I had a 
wide-awake, growing boy I would no more 
turn him loose in your town, Mr. Alderman, 
than I would cut his throat with my own 
hand. Not, certainly, if there was a spark 



^00ietnavvi anh gltt^* 153 

of human nature within him, and a boy 
without such a spark is hardly worth rais- 
ing. And more than that, I will say this, 
that what with your saloons and your wide- 
open gambling resorts, and your doorways 
of hell, wherein sit spiders luring flies, it 
has come to pass that every mother whose 
boy encounters harm thereby should be en- 
titled to damages at least as great as juries 
award a careless pedestrian who gets his 
legs cut oflf at a railway crossing. You say 
that laws are inadequate to cope with evils 
of this kind ; if that is so, then an outraged 
citizenhood should rise superior to law, and 
enter upon a crusade to destroy the infa- 
mous dens that decoy our boys. On a cer- 
tain downtown street there is a newly opened 
resort, the windows of which are closely 
draped, and before the door of which a 
placard is suspended which invites only men 
to enter within. Now and then a hideously 
ugly man, with a yellow beard, comes to the 
ticket window and looks out like a taran- 
tula from its hole, but in the main the place 
seems absolutely unfrequented. 

Take your stand and watch for awhile, 
though, and you will see young men and 
small boys, old men and slouching repro- 



154 ^xx^ematn^ antJr |lu^* 

bates of all conditions and colors going in 
and coming out by dozens. Why doesn't 
some good citizen enter a complaint of that 
place and break it up? We would pounce 
upon a smallpox case soon enough wherever 
it might lurk, but we are strangely indiflfer- 
ent where the menace is only to the soul. 

How can we expect to keep our boys 
pure and raise them to lives of usefulness 
when such iniquitous places are run wide 
open on public streets at noonday, granting 
admission to all masculinity between the 
ages of 7 and 70? 

A well-guarded youth is supposed to be 
at home in the night time and not to be fre- 
quenting shy neighborhoods at any hour. 
So that we might feel comparatively safe 
about the boy we send out into the world 
at an early age to begin his career as errand 
boy or messenger if these pernicious decoys 
were maintained only at night and in low 
vicinities. When the trap is set, however, 
right in the business center of the town by 
daylight, what safety have we? Whenever 
I look into the face of an eager, bright, 
curious, thoroughly alive boy I feel like 
shaking every other duty of life and going 
forth to do battle with the devil for that 
lad's soul. 



^o&^xnavvi antf ^xxc* 155 

Why should evil have so much greater 
chance than good? For one reason I don't 
beUeve we make the good attractive enough. 
The devil has stolen the trademark of light 
for half his wares. Why not have more 
fun and frolic in the home? Why not add 
a gymnasium and dancing hall to the Sun- 
day school and filter some of the world's 
innocent sunshine inside its gloomy walls? 
Why may not the eager, active heart of 
youth find its good cheer and jollity some- 
where else than in forbidden places and 
among smooth and unscrupulous knaves? 
If we made our churches less austere and 
their gatherings more alluring to the young, 
these low and vicious resorts might close 
for lack of patronage. 

God bless the boys. I love them next 
best to girls, and sometimes even a little 
better, when they are especially frank and 
brave and true. I am not going to see 
them harmed without a protest, either, and 
I would be one of a crowd this very day 
to march upon the resorts of evil that lie 
in wait, all over town, to destroy the bonnie 
fellows. If I had my way, every man or 
woman who makes money by pandering to 
the curiosity of a boy's nature, inciting to 



156 ^0^^tnavvi ttnlr ^u^* 

unworthy passion by means of lewd pic- 
tures and the like, should be consigned to 
instant perdition. The earth is too hal- 
lowed to receive their vile dust! 



m 



Dear girls, if you would be beautiful with 
the beauty that strikes root in heaven, first 
of all be natural. Be true to something 
within you higher than any conventional 
code or worldly wise mandate. If it is your 
natural impulse to be courteous, and sym- 
pathetic, and sweet (and blessed be the fact, 
it is the natural impulse of most girls so 
to be!), don't let miserable conformity and 
its tricksters exchange }^our genuine blos- 
som for a mere shred of painted muslin, 
fashioned though it be after even so perfect 
a similitude of a rose. The birds of the air 
nor the angels in heaven will ever be fooled 
by any artificial rose, let me tell you, how- 
ever much dudes and society feather-heads 
:may pretend to desire it. Grow for some- 
thing better than this world; wear your 
sweetness in your heart rather than on your 
pocket handkerchief. 



^<t««ntctru itn&r ^ne, 157 



^ 



The great drawback to domestic felicity 
often lies in the fact that we get too familiar 
with one another. There should be a cer- 
tain reserve in the most intimate relation- 
ships. Sisters and brothers have no right 
to burst into one another's private rooms 
without knocking. Wives have no more 
right to search their husband's pockets than 
they have to do the same little service for a 
distant acquaintance. I have no right to 
read the Young Person's letters without per- 
mission, although I have a right to win her 
confidence so that she shows them freely. 
The Captain has no more right to visit the 
Boy's bank for pennies because he is her 
brother, than she has to abstract money from 
the grocery-man's till. You have no more 
right to obtrude your conversation upon 
your wife, nor she upon her husband, when 
either is in the middle of a thrilling story, 
than you or she would have to interrupt the 
Queen of England at her devotions. An 
"excuse me," if a mother is obliged to in- 
terrupt her youngest child's babble, is quite 
as good a way to teach the baby manners 



158 ^o&j^ttxixvvi anlf ^u^* 

as a course of lectures later on etiquette. The 
man who gets up and slams shut the ven- 
tilator in a crowded car to suit his own con- 
venience, or the woman who throws open 
a car-window regardless of the occupants 
of the seat behind her, is no ruder than Bess 
is when she ignores brother Tom's com- 
fort at home, or Tom is when he pounces for 
the biggest orange on the plate when only 
Bess and he are at table. When either 
makes rude remarks to the other, they sin 
against the true code of etiquette more than 
when they are discourteous at a party or 
boisterously unkind with a comrade, just as 
he is more criminally careless who pounds 
a piano to pieces with a hammer than he 
who batters the pine case it was brought 
in. The greater the value of the article, 
the choicer we are supposed to be of it, 
and in the same line of argument, the 
dearer and closer the tie that binds us, the 
more considerate we should be in the han- 
dling of it. I may hurt the feelings of a 
society acquaintance, and there is restitution 
and forgiveness, but when I stab the dear 
old mother's heart with an unkind word, 
or wound my child's feelings with an injus- 
tice or a cruelty, or ridicule the sensitive 



^00!^tntxvvi anl^ ^me* 159 

feelings of a brother or a sister, not eternity 
itself shall be long enough to extract the 
sting from my memory when my dear ones 
are dead and love's opportunity is vanished 
forever. 

Study politeness, then, which is the body- 
guard of love, and build up for yourself 
the structure of a happy home. 



^ 



Has it been borne in upon you what radi- 
ant mornings and September nights the last 
two weeks have brought in? Have you 
stopped, Mr. Busyman, to note the wonder 
of the skies, never so glorious as of late? 
Did you see the sunset the other evening 
when a gigantic cloud stood almost zenith 
high against the flaming west, and took on 
for a time the panoply of a king? Did you 
notice the purple center and the dazzling 
edge, with the rose blush that fringed its 
borders? Did you sec it pale to gray and 
vanish like a ghost into the starry night? 
Do you ever stop, Mrs. Featherhead, to 
mark the beauty of our wayside clover or 
the sparkle of a buttercup in the dew? Have 
you found the nooks where, like shy chil- 



160 ^o&i^tnavi^ antjr ^u^* 

dren, the violets cluster? Did you mark a 
certain day, a week or so ago, when the 
heavens were full of cloud battalions, tak- 
ing new shapes every minute, and often dis- 
solving in long lines of purple rain, shot 
through with stitches of golden light? 
Have you seen the lake lately, as blue as a 
heather bell, as wild as a wood-bird, as 
peaceful as a brooding dove? Where were 
you the other night when out of the sullen 
storm cloud the "light that never was on 
land or sea" enfolded us, and the world 
hung like an emerald in a topaz sky? 







No law of morals should be less arbi- 
trary for men than it is for women. An 
impure heart, a riotous appetite, a profane 
tongue, are no more excusable in a man 
than they are in a woman. If a man is 
supposed to shrink from selecting his wife 
among the unclean in thought and immoral 
of practice, why should not a young girl be 
allowed an undefiled selection? When 
girls grow so queenly natured that they 
demand that their lover should be of the 
royal stock and never demean themselves 



to stoop to mate with impurity and profli- 
gacy just because it carries a handsome face 
and a well-filled pocketbook, there will be 
some chance for happiness in the married 
estate. It is this placing white flowers in 
smutty buttonholes, or, in other words, 
the wedding of pure women to blase and 
wicked men, that sows the seed of the tare 
in what was meant by the primal law to be 
a harvest of golden grain. Do you pick 
slug-eaten roses and wind-fall blossoms? 
When you go forth to buy material for 
a new gown do you choose cotton warp 
fabrics and colors that will fade in the 
first washing? Your answers to all these 
question are prompt enough, but when I 
ask you what choice you make of gentle- 
men friends, you are not quite so ready 
with a reply. Do you choose the young 
man who has a clean record, who neither 
drinks nor wastes his money in riotous 
practices? How about the tobacco chew- 
ers and the swearers? How about the lewd 
jesters and the low-minded? Provided he 
wears fine clothes, can dance well and make 
a good appearance in society, and above all 
can give you a handsome diamond for an 
engagement rmg, are you not willing to 



162 ^0&i^tnavv[ txnb ^txe* 

accept a lover in spite of his known repu- 
tation as a fast young man about town? 
Girls, you had much better choose a specked 
peach for canning than such a man for a 
husband. Do you imagine that by and by 
at the upper court, whither we are all has- 
tening as quickly as the old patrol wagon of 
time can carry us, there will be any dis- 
tinction made between men and women? 
Think you a man is going to get ofif easier 
than a sorrowful and sinful woman merely 
because the world falsely taught him that 
the exigencies of his nature demanded 
greater latitude than hers? 



^ 



You may retouch a faded picture, you 
may patch up an old piano, you may mend 
a shattered vase, but you cannot make a 
plucked rose grow again; it will wither and 
die in spite of every efifort to restore it to the 
stem from which it fell. And so with the 
heart from which a low desire in the guise 
of an alluring temptation has snatched the 
flower of innocence. That heart will fade 
into hopeless loss unless a greater love than 
yours or mine intervenes to save. An im- 
pure soul never started out impure from the 



^0^ietnavv[ antf ^wje* 163 

first any more than a peach was decayed 
in the blossom. It is the small beginnings, 
dear girls, that lead up to the bitter end- 
ings. The impure book read on the sly, 
the questionable jest laughed at in secret, 
the talk indulged in with a schoolmate or 
a friend which you would be unwilling for 
"mother' to hear, the horrible card circu- 
lated under the desk or behind the teacher's 
back, those are the beginnings of an ending 
sadder than the blight of any desolation 
that storm or drought or frost can bring 
upon the blossoms. If I only could, how 
gladly I would dip my pen to-night in a 
light that should outshine the electric splen- 
dor of our streets and write a message 
against the dark background of the sky, to 
startle young girls into the realization of the 
danger that lurks in the first indulgence of 
thoughts and companionships that are not 
pure. Avoid all such as you would avoid 
the contagion of small-pox, and a thousand 
times more. Small-pox, at its worst, can 
only mar the body, but the friend who lends 
you bad books or tells you "smutty" stories 
profilers a contagion to your soul which all 
the fountains of all your tears can never 
cleanse away. 



164 J^^^jentttru antf 5Ku^* 



THIS BABY OF OURS. 

There's not a blossom of beautiful May, 
Silver of daisy, or daffodil gay, 
Nor the rosy bloom of apple tree flowers, 
Fair as the face of this baby of ours. 

You could never find, on a bright June day, 
A bit of fair sky so cheery and gay; 
Nor the haze on the hills in noonday hours, 
Blue as the eyes of this baby of ours. 

There's not a murmur of wakening bird— 
The clearest, sweetest, that ever was heard 
In the tender hush of the dawn's still hours- 
Soft as the laugh of this baby of ours. 

There's no gossamer silk of tasseled corn, 
Nor the* flimsiest thread of the shy wood fern — 
Not even the cobwebs spread over the flowers — 
Fine as the hair of this baby of ours. 

There's no fairy shell by the sounding sea, 
No wild rose that nods on the windy lea, 
No blush of the sun through April's showers, 
Pink as the palm of this baby of ours. 



^ 



Don't you get awfully tired of people who 
are always croaking? A frog in a big, 



^00etntxv^ ant:f Jlw^* i65 

damp, malarial pond is expected to make 
all the fuss he can in protest of his surround- 
ings. But a man! Destined for a crown, 
and born that he may be educated for the 
court of a king ! Placed in an emerald world 
with a hither side of opaline shadow, and a 
fine dust of diamonds to set it sparkling 
when winter days are flying; with ten mil- 
lion singing birds to make it musical, and 
twice ten million flowers to make it sweet; 
with countless stars to light it up with fiery 
splendor, and white, new moons to wrap it 
round with mystery; with other souls within 
it to love and make happy, and the hand of 
God to uphold it on its rushing way among 
the countless worlds that crowd its path: 
what right has a man to find fault with such 
a world? 

When the woodtick shall gain a hearing, 
as he complains that the grand old century 
oak is unfit to shelter him, or the bluebird 
be hearkened to when he murmurs that the 
horizon is off color, and does not match his 
wings, then, I think, it will be time for man 
to find fault with the appointments of the 
magnificent sphere he inhabits. 

"It is a fine day!" remarks Miss Cherry- 
lips. 



166 ^o^etnavvi antf ^me* 

''Too cold," says the croaker; "beastly 
wind, not fit for a dog to breathe." 

Oh, yes, my dear, I heard him say it this 
very morning, and while I sat and listened 
to him I could but think to myself, "What 
would become of the croaker without the 
weather topic to fall back upon?" When all 
else failed him,he is sure to have something 
to find fault with within the range of this 
universal and inexhaustible topic. It is too 
warm or too cold; there is too much rain, 
or there is a drought; the winters are chang- 
ing and microbes are on the increase; the 
peach buds are blighted by a cold snap in 
spring, and the potatoes have failed or are 
about to fail, owing to a wet June. 

That is the way the croaker holds forth 
whenever he can get anybody to listen to 
him. I sometimes wonder what he would 
do if he really had great things to fret about; 
if one of his beautiful children were to die, 
or the faithful wife he loves so well in his 
heart, perhaps, but never takes the trouble 
to acquaint with the fact, were to weary of 
his endless faultfinding and steal away from 
it all into the quietude of the grave. I won- 
der if he would not then look back upon 
these days of "croaking" with amazement 
that he was ever so blind and stupid a fool. 



I knew a woman once who was very, very 
charming. She could sing "Allan Percy" in 
a way that would melt the heart within you. 
She could paint on china and decorate the 
panels of doors, and on the whole she was 
calculated to enjoy life and make it enjoya- 
ble for others. But her home, on the con- 
trary, was utterly devoid of peace and com- 
fort. Her husband took no pleasure there, 
although he was lavish in the expenditure 
of money to render the place attractive. Her 
children were glad to get away from their 
home and find otherwhere the freedom and 
gaiety denied them there. Why was all 
this, when the mother was so eminently 
fitted by grace and accomplishments to 
create a beautiful and happy home? Sim- 
ply because she was always fretting and 
fussing about trifles. She was a croaker and 
always finding fault. She fought flies until 
life was a burden to everybody who watched 
her. She said that they would spoil the paint, 
poison the food and ruin the curtains. She 
was after them at early dawn nor gave over 
the chase until late at night. She would 
leave the dinner table to chase a fly and kill 
it with a folded paper. She would stop the 
lullaby song she was singing to her pretty 



168 ^0&^tnixvvi anb ^u^* 

baby, to get up and call somebody to come 
in and hunt a stray blue-bottle that was 
bunting its stupid head against the window 
screen. She said that her hfe wasn't worth 
a farthing to her if the flies got into her 
home, and she would sooner jump in the 
river than submit to the pestilential inflic- 
tion. Then she was forever prophesying 
some dreadful fate for herself by reason of 
the muddy footprints that occasionally 
found their way onto the carpets. 

"I declare," she would say, "if you boys 
don't stop tracking dirt into the house I'll 
die before my time. If there is anything I 
hate it is a careless boy!" 

And the boys took her at her word and 
stopped tracking mud. But they were 
gradually lured to stay away from home, and 
the soil they took into their hearts was per- 
haps harder to efiface than the footmarks 
they left upon the floor of mother's neatly 
kept hallways. 

She was always anticipating trouble that 
never came. She knew the girl was going 
to leave. She was simply too great a treas- 
ure to keep. She was absolutely certain 
that the milkman was watering his imilk, and 
the baby would get sick. She had no doubt 



^a^^ntctrtj fxnlf ^ne* 169 

whatever but what her husband was going 
to ruin himself on 'Change, and then what 
would become of them all? So she worried 
and fretted and fumed, until patience, like 
a hunted bird, spread its wings and flew 
away, and what might have been a happy 
home became a stranded wreck upon the 
rocks of contention. 

Oh, I tell you right now, girls, if you can 
only cultivate one accomplishment out of 
the many that wait to crown a perfect 
womanhood, cultivate a pleasant temper and 
cheerful disposition. The ability to speak 
many languages, to paint, to dance, to sing, 
or even to wield a graceful pen is nothing 
compared to the ability to make a lovely 
home. Nobody ever yet succeeded in that 
noblest endeavor without abjuring needless 
faultfinding, croaking and fretting. 



As a general thing I don't believe in ser- 
mons served as restaurants serve beef — in 
slices. I believe in teaching truths, rather, 
as one whips cream, dropping in the moral 
as an almost imperceptible flavoring. But I 
tell you there are times when I feel like 



170 ^0&i^tnavt^ txntf ^ue* 

mounting a pulpit and thundering with old 
Calvin, until the air emits sulphur. Espe- 
cially when I see the inhumanities and out- 
rages practiced upon children by witless 
parents, do I feel stirred to my soul's depths. 
If we treated our flower beds as we do our 
children there wouldn't be a blossom left in 
the world. If we served our meals as we do 
our children, there would be rampant indi- 
gestion and black-browed death at the heels 
of every one of us. Now and then you see 
a wise mother and sensible father, but the 
biggest half of humanity receive their chil- 
dren as youngsters receive their Christmas 
toys, to be played with when in a good 
humor, and bundled anywhere out of sight 
when out of sorts or engrossed with more 
important matters. We forget, half of us, 
that a little child's sense of injustice and sor- 
row and wrong is compatible with its own 
growth and experience rather than with our 
own. What to us is a paltry trial is the 
cause of keenest, unalleviated woe to the 
child of five. The possession of uncounted 
gold at forty will not be more precious than 
the possession at three of the apple or the 
book we so rudely snatch from the little 
hands without a word of apology. Take 



^o^ietnavvi an^ ilw^. 



171 



the time to explain to the little fellow why 
you deprive him of some cherished pos- 
session and you will save the tender bit of a 
heart a vast amount of unnecessary aching. 

I have many things to be thankful for this 
stormy winter night. One is that the coal 
bin is full and the lock on the outer door 
secure. Another is that the rooftree bends 
above an unbroken band, and that disease 
with its fell touch lingers the other side of 
the threshold of the little home. Another 
is that, as a family, we all have straight backs 
and moderately developed intellects; that 
we are neither dime museum freaks, luna- 
tics, nor half-wits. Another is that none of 
us chew gum, carry around dogs, nor make 
expectoration the chief business of a day's 
outing. Another is that I am getting so 
used to the alarm clock that I sleep through 
its wild clamor and escape the duties that 
fall to the lot of that other member of the 
home circle whose ear and conscience are 
not so sadly seared as mine. Another is 
that I know enough to detect butter from 
oleomargarine, and am not roped in by 



172 3t^o0etnartj anb Kw^* 

Blank street vendors with their dollar and 
a half tubs. Another is that I am not the 
sort of fellow to be always hitting another 
fellow when he has been down and is try- 
ing to stand steady again. Another is that 
I am modest enough to question whether I 
could run a grip any better than he does? 
Another is that I got one answer to the 
"ad." wherewith I sought to capture a gold 
watch. It would have been an embarrass- 
ing thing to have received not one solitary 
little nibble. Another is that the elevator 
boy who occasionally carries me to the top 
floor and intermediate stations around at 
Blank's is kind and does not treat me with 
the haughty scorn he bestows on others. 
Another is that I have the serene equipoise 
of nerve which renders me calm and even 
cheerful under the knowledge that there is 
nothing in the house to eat, and two invited 
guests gently sleeping the happy hours away 
in the chamber above, dreaming perchance of 
toothsome viands not to be. Another is that 
in spite of weather I take no colds, and am 
as impervious to catarrhal or pneumonic af- 
fections as an eagle is impervious to the at- 
tack of tom-tits. Another is that I live in a 
town where people sell no beer; they may 



steal and backbite, and raise the old lad gen- 
erally, but thank goodness the baleful glit- 
ter of a glass beer bottle has never yet 
eclipsed the moral splendor of the scene. 
Another is that I have been enabled to pre- 
serve a few staunch and trusty friends 
through the evolution of that rainy-weather 
costume which a few of my sex have joined 
me in essaying. I cannot speak for future 
tests, but so far my henchmen have stood 
firm. And right here let me say that any 
friend, man, woiman or babe, who can re- 
main loyal to you after you have been seen 
in public in a dress-reform garment is worth 
cultivating, and should be made the theme 
of special psalms of praise. Another is that 
the picture I had taken the other day looks 
worse than I do, and when I send it ofif to 
unsuspecting admirers I am not torn with 
the thought that when they see the original 
they will drop scalding hot tears of disap- 
pointment. This idea of raising false hopes 
in the minds of confiding strangers savors 
too much of Ananias and Sapphira. Anoth- 
er is that so far in life I have preserved a 
stern and unshaken resolution not to wear 
a false front. A woman in a store bang is 
next worse to a chromo in an art gallery. 



174 ^o^etnavvi artiCf ^w^* 

or a muslin rose among American beauties 
fresh from the rose gardens. ArtificiaUty, 
my dear, pretense and assumption, are hard- 
er to put up with than anything else in the 
world, unless it is corns. But far ahead of 
all the above enumerated causes for grati- 
tude is one which thrills me most profound- 
ly, and which can be summed up in half a 
dozen words, the echo of which, perhaps, 
will find a lodgment in some other hearts. 
I am thankful, very, very thankful, that I 
am not the mother, nor the aunt, nor the 
half-sister, nor the first cousin, nor even the 
next-door neighbor, of the boy who kills 
sparrows for two cents bounty on the little 
heads. If I had such a boy within range of 
my voice to-night I should say to him, "Be 
poor, my man; be unsuccessful in business, 
and not up to bargains all your life, but don't 
be shrewd and sordid and cruel in seeking 
your gains. Better go by the name of 'mol- 
lycoddle' and 'baby' among the other boys 
than get to be a little ruffian with your arrow 
and your sling-shot, and the name of a keen- 
killer tacked on to yourself. Let the spar- 
rows alone, or if you really feel that they are 
the nuisance they are made out to be, kill 
them if you like, but do it in a gentlemanly 



way (if such a paradox is possible), and 
don't take money for the job." The boy 
or the man who will take a life for sordid 
ends, or, in other words, who will seek to 
enrich himself on "blood money," is pretty 
low down in the human scale. 



^ 



Laughter is a positive sweetness of life, 
but, like good coffee, it should be well 
cleared of deleterious substance before use. 
Ill-will and malice and the desire to wound 
are worse than chicory. Between a laugh 
and a giggle there is the width of the hori- 
zons. I could sit all day and listen to the 
hearty and heartsome ha! ha! of a lot of 
bright and jolly people, but would rather 
be shot by a Winchester rifle at short range 
than be forced to stay within earshot of a 
couple of silly gossips. Cultivate that part 
of your nature that is quick to see the mirth- 
ful side of things, so shall you be enabled 
to shed many of life's troubles, as the plum- 
age of the bird sheds rain. But discourage 
all tendencies to seek your amusement at 
the expense of another's feelings or in aught 
that is impure. It was Goethe who said: 



176 ^O0j^tnavv^ txntfi ^u^* 

"Tell me what a man laughs at and I will 
read you his character." 







I'll take my chances any day to find 
heaven on earth, if I can have the run of 
the woods up along our northern lake shore 
in early springtime. I want no companions 
either, unless, perhaps, it be a child or a 
dog, for artificial women and dudish men, 
let loose in the woods, are harder to endure 
than gad-flies. It was scarcely more than 
sunrise, the other morning, when I left the 
house and took my way toward the forest 
shrine undesecrated as yet by surveyors or 
wood-choppers, the advent of either of 
whom in a country town means good-bye 
to heaven on that particular spot of earth! 
We found the air so full of sweetness, the in- 
stant we struck the depths of the woods, that 
one could almost fancy the wise men of the 
East had been there before us to greet the 
new-born Spring with spices as they greeted 
another Heaven-born child a score of cen- 
turies ago in Bethlehem. Every shrub held 
a softly-tinted leafbud half unfolded, like a 
listless hand. The maple leaves were pink 



and glossy, like rose petals wet with rain. 
The hickory trees were unfolding great 
creamy buds that looked like magnolias. 
The hawthorns were all afloat with silver 
blossoms, like loosened sails. The earth 
seemed singing to the heavens, "God is 
here!" and from the blue depths of quietude, 
where a few clouds spread their soft wings 
like brooding birds, came back the answer, 
"He is here!" The lake claimed Him, and 
a thousand azure waves 'murmured His 
presence on the deep. Wherever we looked, 
at our feet where the June lilies whitened the 
ground like perfumed snow, and the moss 
was bubbling like a wayside spring with 
sunshine in place of water; at the misty fo- 
liage overhead, like shadowy spirit wings; 
at the circle of blue that bounded the earth, 
or into the very heart of heaven above us, 
it seemed as though God, visible and mani- 
fest, was there to give us greeting. Finally, 
we found a point of high land, touched here 
and there with shadows flung down from 
budding birches, and starred with dande- 
Hons in flocks, like golden butterflies. Here, 
leaving the material part of me leaning up 
against a tree-trunk to rest, as one thrusts 
a cumbersome garment on a nail, my soul 

12 



178 ^o&jentavvi anb ^me* 

went wandering off into Paradise, and for- 
got awhile its environment and its earth- 
born responsibilities. Next time the world 
has failed to use you well and you are smart- 
ing from the sense of injury undeserved, or 
the frets of domestic life have worn you 
down to the minimum, like a blade that is 
eternally upon the grindstone, start for the 
woods. Take a big basket with you and fill 
it full of lilies, and, ten to one, before you 
get home again the lilies will have taken 
root in your heart and your basket will be 
full of contentment. 



m 



Educate the children to the expectation 
of isorrow, not as a monster who is to devour 
them, but as an angel who is to meet them 
on the way and lead them gently home to 
heaven. Teach them to hold themselves in 
readiness for whatever life has in store, as 
soldiers are trained for a battle whose end 
is certain peace. Teach them to endure all 
things, only striving to sweeten and soften 
rather than to harden under the discipline 
of sorrow. Unselfishness is the most rare 
and at the same time the most Christian vir- 



tue possible for human nature to attain to, 
but did anybody ever yet grow unselfish 
through a life of indolent self-indulgence 
and ease? Did fruit ever amount to any- 
thing that was left unacquainted with the 
sharp discipline of the gardener's shears? 
I tell you, all the way up from an apple to 
a man it takes lots of pruning and lopping 
ofT of superfluous branches to bring out the 
flavors and sweeten the fiber of the fruit. 






I can imagine a lot of way-worn pilgrims 
drawing up to heaven's gate. 

"What will you have?" asks old St. Peter, 
standing idle and calm in the perpetual sun- 
shine that Hes beyond the swinging portal. 

"I will have my crown," says one. "I 
have earned it." 

"And I will have my harp," says another ; 
"my fingers are eager to pick out the heav- 
enly tunes." 

"And I will hie me at once to my heavenly 
mansion," says a third. "Long time I have 
plodded, foot-sore and weary, to gain the 
habitation of its enduring rest." 

But if you can imagine "Amber" piping 
forth her small request, I think you might 



180 ^00^matru anlf ^w^* 

hear her say : "Conduct me, oh, aged friend, 
to the nearest sand-bank, where I may He 
face downward in the sunshine for fifty years 
to come, and hear the surf break on 'Scon- 
sett's reef." That is what I have been doing 
for the past fortnight, and both soul and 
body have waxed strong in the process. 

What a tired passenger we carry around 
with us, sometimes, in this marvelous Pull- 
man coach of ours, wherein the soul takes 
passage for its overland trip from the cradle 
to the grave. How restless it gets, and how 
troublesome. How it turns from compan- 
ionship, even that of books, and finds no 
panacea for its torment, until some kind fate 
side-tracks it and lets the noisy world rum- 
ble on with the clatter and clash of conflict- 
ing cares beating the hours to dust beneath 
their flying wheels. 

When I went away for my yearly outing 
I was so cross that there was no living with- 
in six miles of my own shadow. I hated 
everything on earth, and everything on earth 
hated me. But I have come back as sweet- 
ly as the breath of a rose steals through a 
lattice. That is the effect of a jaunt, my 
dear; and let me say right now that if you 
are holding on to your money in the hope 



^o&i^xnavvi anb ^u^* i8i 

of getting rich sometime, or if you are 
traveling in a rut because you think you are 
too poor to avoid it, or if you are grinding 
your soul into fine dust in the process of lay- 
ing up against a rainy day, just stop right 
where you are and listen to me. Any money 
that is gained at the expense of health, either 
physical or mental ; any duty held to in the 
face of nervous breakdown; any gain se- 
cured at the expense of peace of mind and 
growth of soul, is not worth the holding. 
You cannot be of any use in the world if you 
are worn out or sick. You may persist in 
holding on, but your grip is weak, and your 
efifect on affairs and people is simply that of 
an irritant. You owe it to yourself, as well 
as to others, to go away and get rested. If 
it costs money to do so, consider money well 
spent that gains so fair an equivalent as rest 
and change, and renewed vigor. I tell you 
there are few better uses to which you may 
put your dollars than in a yearly outing. 
Your pockets may be lighter when you get 
back, but so will your heart be, and the few 
sacrifices necessary in the way of less expen- 
sive clothes and cigars, or less frequent 
gloves and bonnets, will be well worth the 
making for the result gained. 



182 ^0&^mavvi an^ ^u^* 



I wish Columbus had never discovered 
us. I wish that he had never steered his 
old bark westward and found the "land of 
the free and the home of the brave." For 
with discovery came civilization, and I be- 
lieve we would have been better of¥ without 
it. If we only could have been left to our- 
selves and gone on sitting under lotus trees 
unaffected by dressmaker and tailor bills, I 
believe the sum total of happiness would 
have been far greater in the world than it is 
to-day. I would love to return to my alle- 
giance to nature and forever desert the 
haunts of civilization and the marts of trade. 
I want to gather together a picked band of 
kindred souls and go out and pitch tent by 
the Gunnison River. Ever been there? 
Imagine a stream of gold flowing through 
hills colored like an apple orchard in May, 
with a sky bending down above them like 
the wing of an oriole. I want to forget the 
insolence of a class who may be as good as 
I am in the eye of the law, but whom it 
would take a ton of soap and God's grace to 
make my equal in point of cleanliness and 



^0&emavvi antf glue 



183 



decency. I want to forget forever the 
clang of the cable car and the rumble of its 
wheels. I want to return to the heathendom 
that worships gods instead of dollars and 
loves mankind simply because it knows 
nothing of faithlessness and fraud. 



"Plaze, sor," said a servant to the head 
of a certain suburban household the other 
morning, "the gintleman who sthole the 
chickens left his hat in the hincoop." Just 
so, Bridget. And the lady who attends to the 
affairs of the kitchen has her foot upon the 
neck of the miserable woman who is nom- 
inally at the head of the house. Oh, no! I 
am not going to enter into a disquisition 
upon the merits of the servant question. 
Years ago, when I cantered lightly in my 
ride against windmills, I might have under- 
taken it, but the question has grown too 
large to be settled by talking. The state of 
things in this free country is growing just a 
trifle too free. There are no longer any ser- 
vants in this proud land. It is not ladylike 
to serve. The person who superintends the 
domestic affairs of our home merely conde- 



184 ^o&^tnavvi ctn^ glw^* 

scends for a consideration. We no longer 
have any rights as employers. The wind 
has tacked to another quarter. Should we 
wish to discharge our lady cook or dispense 
with the services of a gentleman artisan it 
stands in place for us to approach them in 
a respectful manner, put the case before 
them clearly and ask them humbly, without 
offense to their delicate sensibilities, if they 
will kindly allow us to forego their so-called 
services. Question yourself seriously, my 
dear; are you sufficiently considerate? 
Think how these defenseless ladies and 
thin-skinned gentlemen who fill positions of 
trust in your establishment must suffer 
sometimes from your boorish impetuosity. 
Are you always cordial in your greeting 
when the worn face of the cook appears at 
the delayed breakfast hour and she places 
before you the hurried pancake and the un- 
derdone steak? Do you stop to think how 
the poor creature has danced all night at 
a ball and has crept home after your stiff- 
necked and rebellious husband has bounded 
away to catch the early train, breakfastless 
and profane? And when the low-voiced and 
timid second girl tells you that, as a lady 
who knows her place, she really cannot de- 



^0&etnavvi txntf ^w^* 185 

mean herself to wipe off the paint or sweep 
the front steps, do you take her by the hand 
and acknowledge the indiscretion of your 
coarser nature in expecting her to do such 
menial service? How many of us, clods 
that we are, have raged when the mild-man- 
nered laundry maid has appropriated our 
underclothing, or remonstrated when the 
number seven foot of the blue-blooded cook 
has condescended to stretch our silken hose? 
It behooves us to join the ranks of the "phi- 
lanthropic fiends" and look to it that we im- 
prove our methods of treating the delicate 
gentry who tarry with us so briefly. 



W 



By the way, I think I occasionally hear a 
feeble pipe from a man to the effect that the 
girls are responsible for all the tomfoolery 
in the world. Don't you know that you are 
the very ones who tend to make them so — 
you men? You follow after and woo and 
wed just that sort of girls. You won't look 
at a sensible little woman who can make 
''lovely" bread, abjures bangs, can't dance 
and has no "style." You laugh at and make 
sly jokes at the expense of our big hats and 



186 ^o&!^tnavi^ an^ ^ne* 

our pronounced fashions, but when you 
choose your company, and often your wives, 
I notice you pass right by the home-keeping 
birds and take the peacocks. Of course, 
no one Hves in this age who doubts for a 
moment that woman's chief aim in life and 
purpose of creation, as well as her hope of 
a blessed hereafter, is to please the men and 
get a husband. If you won't have her mod- 
est and simply gowned she is willing to 
make a feather-headed doll and a travesty 
of herself to get you and win heaven ! You 
know perfectly well, you men, that you don't 
care half so much for brains as you do for 
general "get-up," and the woman you honor 
with your choice is selected for a pretty face 
and form, and a becoming costume rather 
than for a clever head and an honest heart. 
I am not talking to old fogies who cling to 
old-fashioned notions, but to young men 
who ridicule the customs of their grand- 
mothers, who shake their heads at salaries 
of two and three thousand a year as inade- 
quate to support wives; who rail against 
woman's extravagance, yet do their best to 
maintain her in it. When you, my fine and 
dapper gentleman, begin to seek out the 
modestly appareled and the sedate girls, 



^0^^tnavvi an^ Slu^. 



187 



then shall folly and vain show fly over seas 
for want of encouragement and the grand 
transformation of sawdust dolls into women 
and pleasure-seekers into home-keepers take 
place. 



W 



TWO DAYS. 

I said to myself one golden day 

When the world was hright and the world was 
gay, 
"Though I live more lives than time has years 
Either in this or the infinite spheres, 

I will fear no blight and I'll bear no cross. 

Against my gains I will write no loss. 
But I and my soul, twin lilies together, 
Shall whiten in endless summer weather!'"' 

I said to myself one weary day 
When the world was old and the world was gray, 
"Has God forgotten Hie wandering earth? 
Are its tears His scorning, its groans His 
mirth? 
There's no blue above where the torn clouds lly. 
There's no bloom below where the dead leaves 
lie; 
Would I and my soul were at rest together 
Wrapped from the chill of this wintry 
weather." 



188 Jjo^jentarij ctntr Ktt^* 

There are some people who Hve in this 
world as a cucumber grows in a garden. 
They cling to their own vine and serve no 
higher end than rotundity and relish. There 
are others who live in the world as a sum- 
mer breeze lives in a meadow; they find out 
all the hidden flowers and set the perfumes 
flying. There are others who live as the sea 
lives in a shell; their existence is nothing 
but a sigh. There are others who live as 
the fire lives in a diamond; they are all 
sparkle. And there are others, and they out- 
number all the rest, who live as a blind mole 
lives in the soil ; they see nothing, feel noth- 
ing, suffer and enjoy a little now and then, 
perhaps, but know nothing to all eternity. 
Such people walk through life as the mole 
walks through the glory of a summer day, 
or burrows beneath the dazzle of a winter 
storm. They are as irresponsive to the 
voices all about them as the mole is to the 
singing of April robins. They are as un- 
touched by the myriad influences of life as 
the mole is by the light of a star or the 
flash of a comet. Their only interest is in 
the question, "Wherewith shall we be 
clothed, and what shall we have to eat?" 
They gather the ripened hours from the tree 



of life as a child gathers fruit, merely for the 
gratification of an instant appetite, not as 
the careful housewife does, who garners 
in a store for wintry weather. Life to them 
is merely a fattening process. They remind 
one of prize beef at a county fair; to-mor- 
row brings the shambles and the butcher's 
axe, but in the serene content of a well-filled 
stall and a full stomach, they take no thought 
of the future. We meet such people every 
day and everywhere. On the streets they 
may see a brute tyrannizing over a helpless 
beast of burden, or a mother (?) yanking a 
sobbing child along by the arm, as full of 
ugliness herself as a thunder-cloud is of elec- 
tricity, or a man following an innocent 
young girl with the devil in his heart, or a 
big boy tyrannizing over a smaller one ; and 
they pass it all by as indifferently as the mole 
would sneak across a battlefield the morning 
after a battle. They have too much to do 
themselves to waste time in remedying other 
people's grievances. They think too much 
of personal reputation to involve themselves 
in an altercation with defilers of the inno- 
cent, and tramplers of the weak. They are 
too respectable to get mixed up in brawls, 
even if the disturbance is brought about by 



190 glxx^^tnctru antf |lu^* 

the devil's own drummers looking up re- 
cruits among the championless and defense- 
less working-girls, or the parentless and 
homeless children of a great city. We meet 
them traveling through the mountains or 
loitering by the sea. Their only use for 
mountains is that they may carve their 
precious initials on the highest peaks, pick 
winter-greens and blue-berries and display 
their fashionable suits and striped stock- 
ings. They look upon the sea as a big 
bathing-tank, and the sky, with all its splen- 
dor of cloud and its glory of sunrise and 
sunset, as a barometer to forecast the weath- 
er. We meet them in business relations, 
and they never believe that courtesy and 
business can go together. A merchant in 
his office or a lady in her parlor will bluntly 
refuse to buy of a worn-out, discouraged, 
heart-sick book-agent, ignoring the fact that 
a smile accompanying even a refusal acts 
like a spoonful of sugar in bitter tea, and 
costs less. Even a "lady" clerk, behind a 
counter, will be haughty and unaccommo- 
dating and insolent to the woman who 
comes to buy, forgetful that a customer will 
go a long distance out of her way to deal 
with a polite and well-mannered clerk, and 



^O0!ctnav^ anb ^u^* i9i 

that, like honesty, poHteness is ever the best 
poHcy. And, on the other hand, a woman 
shopper will be whimsical and captious and 
trying, forgetting that the girl who serves 
her has human blood in her veins, and often 
carries a troubled heart behind her smile or 
her frown. 



They have come! Without the sound of 
a bugle, the bright hosts have marched down 
and taken possession of the land. The 
southern slopes are all alive with their wind- 
shaken tents, and when the sun comes out 
warm and glowing from the cloudy pavil- 
ions of the April sky, he finds a million blos- 
soms on the hills that yesterday were white 
with snow. Some of them are tinted like 
the flush that lingers in the evening sky 
before the stars find it; some of them are 
stainless as unfallen snow; some of them 
are purple as a nautillus sail adrift upon a 
twihght sea; and all of them are joyfully 
welcome to hearts that are weary of Win- 
ter's long reign. And after the hypatica 
shall come the violet, and after the violet the 
trillium, and after the trillium the wild-rose, 



192 ^o^^ntctrtj ctnlr ^u^* 

and after the wild-rose the cardinal-flower 
and the wood-lily, and after them the gentian 
and the golden rod, to mark the wane of the 
year. Oh, who would not live in a world 
whose dial-plate is made of flowers and 
whose circling seasons are told over with 
blossoming trees and gentian-buds? 



I saw a great many things on the way 
this morning as I was coming to town. Sup- 
pose, as the weather is too warm for preach- 
ing, I enumerate them and let you strike the 
balance at the close, to see which way the 
world is jogging. I saw a father, drunk, be- 
side his Httle blue-eyed daughter. His head 
was laid in maudlin sleep upon her shoulder, 
and with blushes that came and went across 
her face like cloud shadows on the slope of a 
hill, she sat and bore the burden of her child- 
ish shame like a little angel. I saw a hard- 
faced, labor-grimed man step out of his way 
to pick a wild rose that grew by the side 
of the road. I saw a young man lash his 
horse because his own bungling driving 
came near colliding his vehicle with a cable 
car. I saw a policeman spring to the rescue 



Ilxx^^mary: anb glu^* 193 

of an old beggar woman who stumbled on 
a street crossing, and saw him fall and tram- 
pled upon in the discharge of duty. I 
saw a pretty girl reach out her white fingers 
and feed a discouraged street-car horse the 
banana she was eating as she passed by. I 
saw a beaten dog turn and fawn beneath his 
master's brutal kick, and I thought to my- 
self, where is a more faithful friendship than 
that? I saw a little golden-headed boy at 
the window of a house as I rode by, and when 
I waved my hand he kissed his in return. I 
saw a tired mother stoop to hug the child 
who fidgeted at her knee in the tedious depot 
waiting-room, and I saw another slap her 
baby because its sticky fingers sought to fon- 
dle her cheek. I saw a little girl get up, 
without suggestion from her mother, and 
yield her seat to an older person. I saw a 
lamed and dying bird just brought down by 
a boy's sling-shot. (I saw that same boy in 
Sabbath-school last Sunday!) I saw one 
woman in fifty thousand wearing the dress- 
reform. I saw eleven girls out of nineteen 
with tightly-laced waists! I saw a hurt 
kitten tenderly attended to by a soldier in 
blue, as I passed Fort Sheridan Camp, and 
involuntarily I said to myself: "The brav- 



194 ^a^^ntartj antf |lit^* 

est are the tenderest; the loving are the dar- 
ing." I saw a small boy beating his mother 
with both fists because she carried him over 
the crowded and dangerous way, and so, 
I thought, we treat the tender God who 
sometimes lifts us, against our will, from 
evil ways. I saw a little coffin in an under- 
taker's window, and thought, what child in 
this busy, bustling city is doomed to fill that 
casket? What love-watched home shelters 
the head that shall one day sleep upon that 
satin pillow? I saw a teacher in one of our 
public schools and overheard a gross bit of 
slang as she passed by. I see myself send- 
ing a child of mine to such a teacher if I 
knew it! I saw a father wheeling his baby 
in a perambulator, with the sun blazing 
straight into its blinking eyes. I saw one 
man out of every ten dodge into a liquor 
saloon when he thought nobody was look- 
ing. I saw a homely girl transformed into 
a beauty by a service of love accorded a 
stranger. I saw a woman lean out of a 
Marshall Field 'bus to laugh at another who 
wore shabby clothes and walked with a 
drooping head. I saw lots of things besides, 
but how does the balance strike? 



flosenttttry; anif ^ne* 195 

If we have been living on bad terms with 
a neighbor; if we have been maintaining a 
chilHng silence and a forbidding reserve with 
anybody thrown often in our way, let us have 
done with such nonsense and live in the 
world as God meant we should. 



Out of the exuberance of a merry heart 
the housekeeper has loosened the tacks in 
the parlor carpet, and the epoch of house- 
cleaning begins. The head of the family, 
pro tern, dweller in the land of desolation 
and sojourner in the valley of wrath, hies 
him to town and wishes vainly for the return 
of the days when he had no wife save in 
Spain and no family outside of Elia's land 
of dreams. The calciminer comes and drops 
leprous splashes all over the hallways and 
the bannisters. One paperhanger taketh 
unto himself another, and the two scatter 
ringlets of snipped paper all over the bed 
chambers, and cumber up the floors with 
sticky paste-pots and brushes. The scrub 



196 ito^^ntartj ctntf ^u^* 

woman breathes hard and devastates the ap- 
proaches of the front steps, while the hired 
girl skips playfully here and there with damp 
cloths and bars of silvery soap. There is no 
breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. We take 
what provender the gods deliver to us in out 
of the way places, like stalled oxen or un- 
complaining army mules ! We sleep by night 
in beds loosely put together and smelling of 
soap. We awake betimes to the rattle of the 
scrubbing brush and the sharp overthrow of 
stovepipes. We see the young person, like 
McStinger, on the rampage from morn till 
night. We watch her hand to hand encoun- 
ters with the pictures that have been wont to 
hang upon the walls. How she swoops upon 
them, bears them down, bufifets them with 
dusters and heaps them high like stumbling 
blocks in the path of the righteous! How 
she sneers at our feeble, yet apt, suggestion, 
and pharisaically "thanks goodness that she 
is good for something besides standing 
around and giving unsolicited advice !" How 
she charges upon our cherished books and 
whacks them together vindictively to loosen 
the dust and the bindings! How she tosses 
the piano like a feather in her strength and 
probes its sensitive heart-strings with a knit- 



ting needle in search of dirt and pins ! How 
she rebukes the Captain for idHng away her 
time at doll-playing while there is so much 
work to do, and drives that gallant young 
field officer forth to do battle with the unre- 
sisting tomato can in the backyard ! What a 
pandemonium reigns over all the domain of 
yesterday's content! Carlo, the dog, whose 
flippant youth is getting its first severe taste 
of life's discipline, retires to an adjacent 
covert and howls a fitful protest. The cat 
blinks sleepily in the sunshine and dreams of 
a future unmarred by suds and a slippery 
foothold. When she has occasion to walk 
across the kitchen floor she shakes her hind 
foot gingerly, like a pilgrim delicately re- 
moving the dust of the enemy's land from 
his members. The goblin brood of chickens 
chuckle with amazement while the hired 
man beats the rugs like a snare drum and 
charges upon the carpet that hangs like a 
vanquished foe across the clothesline. But, 
like everything else, my dear, we take the 
trials of spring housecleaning as the tourist 
takes the storms in the Alps or the sailor 
meets the tempest on the sea. It has not 
come to stay ; the sun-lighted peaks of deliv- 
erance lie just ahead ot us, and there is fine 



198 ^0&exnavvi txntf ^ne* 

sailing for another year when the squall is 
weathered. 

k 

I am tired of the endless dress parade of 
the great alike — aren't you? I am tired of 
walking in file, as convicts walk together in 
stripes — aren't you? I glory in cranks who 
have enough individuality to refuse to be 
sewed up in the universal patchwork, like 
the calico blocks we used to overcast with 
our poor little pricked fingers ever so long 
ago when we were children — don't you? 
The onward sweep of progress in this age 
has prepared the way for non-conformists, 
and, glory be to God ! they are swinging into 
line Hke beacon lights up the Maine coast. 
I confess I have no heart-pining for eman- 
cipation that shall place me alongside of 
Dr. Mary Walker or others of her ilk. I 
would like to retain my womanliness, but I 
would like also to make a distinct mark upon 
my times, be it ever so small and insignifi- 
cant, as an individual and an intelligence 
quite as distinct from the conventional 
masses as a blackbird is when it leaves the 
flock and silhouettes itself in solitary state 



^o&jenxavvi ttntf ^me* 199 

against the deep blue sky from the top of a, 
windy elm tree — wouldn't you? 

I want one good square fling on earth be- 
fore I die. I want the chance to know what 
it is to have enough money to be able to buy 
silk elastic occasionally instead of cotton, 
and to have my teeth filled with gold instead 
of concrete without feeling as though I had 
been robbing hen-roosts for a month after. 
I want to go to the theater in a swell car- 
riage, and sit in the best box, with a pale 
pink ostrich boa draped about my shoulders 
and the opera-glasses of the entire house 
leveled at me for a stunning beauty. I want 
the sensation, for once, of knowing that I 
am as nandsome as I am bright, and as well- 
dressed as I am virtuous. I want to have 
ice cream seven times a week and "Pommery 
Sec" by the dozen in the cellar. I want to 
own a silk umbrella with a golden crook, 
and wear a diamond ring on every finger. 
I want to buy candy whenever I feel like it 
without having to register it in the family 
account book under the head of "sundries" 
and "cough drops." I want to see the time 



200 ^o^etnavvi an^ itu^e* 

when I can call the average shop-girl out 
into the alley and have it out with her with 
none to interfere. I want to settle with her 
for the indignities I have long suffered with 
the pusillanimity of a meek nature. I want 
to ask her between clips why she has always 
sold -me just what I didn't want, and sneered 
at me because I didn't buy more of it. I 
want also to engage in hand to hand conflict 
with the female gum-chewer. I want to con- 
vince her that I have endured all I will of her 
facial contortions, and that the time has 
come for the extinction of her type from the 
face of the blooming earth. I want the pow- 
er to consign every man who even mentions 
"nose bag" to a horse, to the guillotine, and 
to imprison for life every brute who carries 
a snake-whip or uses a check-rein. I want 
to solder the man or woman who objects to 
fresh air inside a tin can and label them "sar- 
dines." I want to shoot on sight the first 
human being who mentions the word 
"draught" in my hearing, and set my dog on 
the fiend who blots the face of nature with 
his ear-muffs. I want to live for a while in 
a country where there are neither thunder- 
storms nor cyclones, but where I can sleep 
nights right through, from March until No- 



^o&iexnavi^ antf ^n^* 201 

vember, without getting up to look for fun- 
nels or shooing the whole family down cellar 
as a hen gathers her chickens from the 
swooping hawk. I want to live in a com- 
munity made up of people who mind their 
own business. I want to be able now and 
then to receive a letter from out of town (it 
is generally a bill!) without having the vil- 
lage postmaster regard me as a burning 
fagot. I want to find a recipe for making 
buckwheat cakes that do not taste like sand. 
I want to be able to detect a hypocrite and a 
traitor on sight, without waiting for a broken 
heart to evidence the fact that I am sold 
again. I want to rise out of the range of 
small annoyances, and fly above the aim of 
inferior people to disturb. I want to grow 
to be more like an eagle that wings its way 
out of the habitat of gadflies, and less like a 
trembling hare pursued by hounds. I want 
to take the lesson to my heart that the soul 
that is constant to itself and aspires towards 
heaven shall never be left a prey to care and 
unrest. I want to strike a dress reform 
which shall make women look less like guys, 
and to encounter a rainy day in which I shall 
not bite the dust, I and my umbrella, and my 
flippety -floppety skirts, and my nineteen 



202 ^a^^nta^ij anh ^u^* 

bundles. I want to cut down the ballot priv- 
ilege and make it impossible for an immi- 
grant to vote before he is a twenty-one-year 
resident of America. I want to convince the 
woman sufifragist that the greatest curse she 
can precipitate upon her sex is the ballot. I 
want to teach my sisters that if they will pay 
more attention to their homes and less to 
outside issues American institutions will be 
more of a success. If the career of a poli- 
tician will spoil a man what would it do for a 
woman? On the principle that a strawberry 
will decay sooner than a pumpkin, or that 
a violet is more fragile than a sunflower, it 
would take about one election day to change 
a woman into a harridan. I never knew but 
one out and out politician who preserved in- 
tact the amenities of a gentleman, and he 
died early of heart trouble. The thing 
killed him physically before it destroyed him 
morally. If any politician reads this and 
wants to challenge the point I want to meet 
him and either convince him or be slain. 



If you are not glad to be alive such weath- 
er as this it is because you are a clod and not 



a sentient being. Why, I never open my 
door these radiant mornings and walk out 
into a world that is more golden than any 
topaz and more radiant than any diamond 
that I do not hug myself for very joy that I 
am alive! The grave has not got me yet! 
And, though I be poor and quite alone and 
go hungry for the fleshpots that make my 
neighbors great about the girth, I am happy 
as a queen and quite content to cast my lot 
with clovers and birds and wayside weeds 
that feel the vigor of summer weather in 
every fiber of prodigal life. To-night the 
sky was like the flame of King Solomon's 
opal — did you see it? And just as the glory 
was growing and deepening into an intensi- 
ty of beauty that made you want to shut 
your eyes and say Oh — h — h! as the little 
boys do at the circus when the elephants go 
round, a thrush whipped out his mellow flute 
and gave us a vesper song that made one 
think of heaven and bands of singing angels ! 
And yet we are discontented and feel our- 
selves misused because we happen to be a 
little poverty-stricken now and then, and it 
is hard work to find the plums in our pud- 
ding! 



^ 



204 ^0^enxav%^ anbr ^me* 

The other morning, before the town clock 
struck 7, I was riding over country in a 
hack, driven by a courtly mannered colored 
boy and drawn by a couple of discouraged 
mules. I was going over to Hampton and 
Chesapeake City to see the sights. A robin 
was quarreling with a sparrow for possession 
of a nest in a treetop hung with blossoms 
thick as Monday's washing, and a small 
pickaninny stood in a doorway and held his 
breath with terror as our driver slashed the 
air with his long whip. The morning was 
superb. The sea lay like an opal with a 
dark setting of hills shadowed like oxidized 
silver, the birds were out like blossoms of 
the upper air with song in place of perfume, 
and the world seemed altogether too jolly 
and bright a spot to link with thoughts of 
sorrow and pain and death. We drove over 
to the soldiers' home, where from four to five 
thousand veteran warriors have found shel- 
ter from the bombarding storm of mundane 
care. Under the shadow of great willows in 
half-leaf and still golden with April sap, in 
sunny corners of broad piazzas, on benches 
by the slope of sluggish streams, or walking 
about the well-kept paths, these old and bat- 
tle-scarred warriors pass the time away. 



"What a hero I might have been," says each 

one to himself, "if only !" or, "What a 

narrow miss I made of glory when that pre- 
mature shell took off my legs and stranded 
me here !" Peacefully they behold hfe's sun 
decHne, and peacefully in turn they take pos- 
session of the narrow beds awaiting them in 
the near cemetery, where so many 
soldiers are sleeping the unheeded years 
away. Without motive or purpose their life 
is scarcely more eventless than their death 
shall finally be. Some way the grounds 
where these patient old graybeards sit day 
after day with nothing to do but muse upon 
the past remind me of the human heart with 
its pensioned hopes, its stranded intentions 
and its crippled endeavors ! What heroisms, 
what subtle intents for good, what preten- 
tious desires were frustrated and made 
worthless by the destiny which changed life's 
battlefield into a "soldiers' home" and the 
scene of action for the shaded seat under the 
willows of a long regret! 



I wonder if Eve, looking over the battle- 
ments of heaven now and then, and seeing 



206 ^a^^tnartj ttn^ ^ue* 

how tired we get down here and how dis- 
couraged and broken-hearted we often are, 
is ever sorry for the heritage she left us, all 
for the sake of an apple ! Does she not curse 
the memory of the earth fruit whose flavor 
has so embittered humanity ! Think of it, oh 
far-removed and perverse ancestress, if it 
were not for you we might have lived in a 
world where dinners walked into the pot and 
boiled themselves over fires that called for 
no replenishing; where rent stockings lifted 
themselves on viewless hands and were deft- 
ly darned by sunshine needles in the air; 
where last year's garments glided into this 
year's styles without the snip of scissors or 
the whirr of sewing machine wheels; where 
brooms swept and dust-cloths dusted unas- 
sisted by human hands; where windows 
cleaned themselves as fogs lift from the lake, 
and washing and ironing were spontaneous, 
like the growth of flowers. I for one am 
heartily tired of having to sufifer for Eve's 
heartless stupidity. Hard work has too 
much of the blight of the primal curse about 
it to suit me, and no matter what philosophy 
we call to our aid the fact remains that 
labor of a certain sort is the heritage of sin, 
and sin was, is and ever shall be accursed. 



But there is something a great deal worse 
than hard work, and that is laziness. The 
man who toils until the great muscles of his 
arm stand out like cords and his broad shoul- 
ders are bent like the branches of a pine 
under the force of a strong wind from the 
north is a king among his kind compared to 
the shiftless do-nothings of life, between 
whose feet are spun the cobwebs of sloth 
and within whose lily-white fingers nothing 
more burdensome than a cigar finds its way. 
Give me a blacksmith any day rather than a 
dude. Work is hard and sometimes thank- 
less, but, Hke tough venison served with jelly 
sauce, it is spiced with self-respect and 
smacks of honest independence. 

^^ 

THE STORY OF A ROSE. 

A white rose grew in a garden place, 
On a slender stem, with a royal grace; 
The nursling of June and her gentle showers, 
Fairest and sweetest of all her flowers. 

The south wind was out one day for a sail. 

In a cloudy boat, so fleecy and frail. 

And he chanced to spy, where musing she 

stood. 
My dear little rose in her snowy hood. 



208 Jsia^^marn ttntf 3au^* 

Oh, softly he whispered and tenderly sighed, 
"Starry Eyes, Starry Eyee, I wait for my hride." 
But she laughed in his face, and told him to go; 
She didn't see why he bothered her so. 

A dewdrop fell in the starry hush, 
Lured from heaven by her dreamy blush; 
But the tender kiss of his balmy lip 
She gave to a bee, next morning, to sip. 

A bobolink left the bloom of a tree 

To tell her tale of whimsical glee; 

The moon dropped a pearl to wear in her breast; 

Dawn wove her a cloak of silvery mist. 

But her hard little heart was colder than ice. 
She sent every suitor away in a trice; 
Till the wind drew nigh, with a terrible roar, 
And said: "Pretty Rose, your playtime is o'er." 

He shook her with might, and he drenched her 

with rain, 
Till the poor little rose swooned away with her 

pain; 
And her shiny crown, with its moonbeam glow, 
He tossed far and wide, like the feathery snow. 

And all that is left of that splendid bloom, 
The diadem gay, and the spicy perfume. 
Is a handful of dust, that once was a rose — 
The eport of the wind, as it fitfully blows. 



^0&!^tnavvi anb ^u«* 209 

Once upon a time there lived a woman. 
She was not very young, nor was she very 
old. She was neither handsome, homely, a 
genius, nor a fool. She was just a common- 
place, good-intentioned, fair type of the aver- 
age woman. This woman prided herself but 
little upon the various accomplishments that 
contribute to the modern woman's popular- 
ity. She could not dance a step, save in front 
of a northeast gale, or in a game of romps 
with her little folks. She could not decorate 
a tea cup to save her life, nor hand-paint 
a clam shell, nor embellish a canvas with 
fleshy cupids and no less corpulent rosebuds. 
She could sing a few insignificant ballads, 
such as "Annie Laurie," "Twilight Dews," 
and "Nearer, My God, to Thee." These 
with a number Hke them, she was always 
ready to furnish in a manner to bring down 
the house, but I doubt if she would have 
been a success either in a comic opera or a 
church choir. She could make bread and 
pieplant pie after a fashion that would make 
a man wish that he had been born earher to 
enjoy more of them. She could tidy up a 
room quicker than a cat could wink its eyes, 
and in the matter of housecleaning she 
was a regular four-in-hand coach and a 

14 



210 ^o&^tnavvi anb Jluje* 

tiger. If you had asked her to lead a class 
in ethical culture or make a speech on suf- 
frage or score a point for reform, this woman 
would have ignobly turned her back and run 
away, and yet perhaps she wielded an influ- 
ence in the world quite as strong as many a 
woman whose name is recorded on the roll 
call of noisy fame. But there was one thing 
this woman abhorred with all the might and 
strength of her soul, and that was slang. 
She had been brought up to consider the use 
of anything more pronounced than the "yea" 
and "nay" of the Quaker vernacular an out- 
rage to refinement, and although drifting far 
from her childhood's faith in many ways still 
preserved an innate shrinking from the ex- 
uberance of vain speech. She allowed no 
little boys to slide the cellar door with her 
own precious yellow-heads who could be 
positively convicted of using naughty lan- 
guage. Her husband left his worldly ways 
in town and only carried home to this nice 
little woman the aroma of propriety and 
coriander seeds. But who ever yet was as- 
sured of a firm foothold upon the pinnacle of 
self-righteousness that the old boy did not 
whip out an arrow and bring them low? It 
becomes my painful duty to chronicle the 



^a^^ntaru an^ ^vte* 211 

temptation and downfall of the upright 
woman. 

It was a tempestuous day of early autumn. 
It not only rained, it poured! It not only 
blew, but it tore, howled, twisted, cavorted! 
The woman had to go to town. At the elev- 
enth hour the family umbrella was kid- 
naped by a demon. (When the prince of 
evil has nothing else to do he sends out his 
imps to hide umbrellas, handkerchiefs, thim- 
bles, scissors, and other domestic essentials.) 
The woman had no time to track the um- 
brella to its lair, so she pinned a newspaper 
over her bonnet and leaped for the train. Ar- 
rived in town she bought a 50 cent umbrella 
from a man who was peddling them on the 
street corner, and from that moment we 
date her downfall. The umbrella proved to 
be fashioned of gum arabic and cobweb. It 
leaked, it exuded, it faded away like a frost- 
flake in her hands, so that ere half an hour 
had passed she gave it to a newsboy, and 
laughed to see him kick it into an alley. 
Then she took off her plumed hat and 
pinned it underneath her cloak, wrapped 
a lace scarf about her head and proceeded 
on her way. Remarking the pleased ex- 
pression on the faces of all she met, she 



212 ^0&etnctv\^ antf ^uje* 

wondered at it, with an Indian outbreak so 
imminent. Small boys danced by her in the 
rain to the sound of their own bright laugh- 
ter; strong men seemed overcome as she 
drew near, and even the stern policemen 
at the street crossings turned aside to hide 
a 9x14 smile. The woman lunched at a pop- 
ular restaurant in the midst of a mysterious 
carnival of glee, and finally took the train 
for home and, leaving the city limits, skirted 
the northern shores of the lake to the sound 
of mufifled mirth. Reaching home and look- 
ing into the mirror she was confronted by 
a countenance that bore all the seeming "of 
a demon that is dreaming." The sea-green 
warp of cotton in the gum-arabic umbrella 
had melted and run in long lines over brow 
and nose and chin. For one moment the 
woman gazed at her frescoed charm, and 
as to what follows we will drop the curtain. 
Suffice it to say, she fell, and the shocked 
echoes of that little home put cotton in their 
ears and fainted into lonely space at being 
called upon to repeat the strong language 
that rent the air. Who shall blame the 
woman if she said "darn" with an emphasis 
that might have made a pirate wan with 
envy? Who shall cast the first stone at her 



until the day dawns that releases my sex 
from the thralldom of its bondage to those 
demons who walk abroad and plot her down- 
fall in rainy weather? 



Wear this bead upon your heart, girls; 
have nothing whatever to do with so-called 
"fascinating" or "magnetic" men. Put no 
faith in mystery when it comes to a question 
of the man you think you love. Rapt 
glances and tender sighs that lead to noth- 
ing in the way of an honest declaration are 
as despoiling to your womanhood as the 
breath of a furnace is to a flower. There is 
no mystery in genuine love, and there is no 
counterfeiting it, either. It is open-faced, 
ready-tongued and clear-eyed. It is a vir- 
tue for heroes, not a platitude in the mouth 
of fools. It is undefiled and set apart, like 
the snow on high hills. Allow no man to 
make you a party to anything clandestine. 
A man who is afraid to meet you at your 
own home, and appoints a tryst in the park, 
or a down-town restaurant, is as much of 
a menace to your happiness as a pestilence 
would be to your health. Remember, in all 



214 ^xjr^^mctraj anb Slu^* 

your experience with so-called love, that the 
fewer adventures a young woman has, the^ 
fewer flirtations and the fewer "affairs," the 
more glad she will be, by and by, when she 
is a good man's wife and a brave boy's or 
sweet girl's mother. A gown oft handled, 
you know, is seldom white, and each ro- 
mance you weave with idle fellows who roll 
their eyes and talk love, but never show you 
the respect to offer you their hand in honest 
marriage — these fascinating "Rochesters'* 
and wicked "St. Elmos," already married, or 
steeped to the lips in evil-doing — deprive 
you of your whiteness and your bloom. 



m 



Do you ever get discouraged and feel like 
saying: "Oh, it's no use! I want to amount 
to something! I have it in me to do great 
and grand things, but the circumstances of 
poverty are against me. I can be nothing 
but a drudge and the sooner I get over 
dreaming of anything higher, the better!" 
Of course you have just such times of think- 
ing and talking, but did you ever comfort 
yourself with the thought that though all 
these things you can not be, you are, really, 



in the sight of God? A diamond is no less a 
diamond because it has been mislaid, and 
passed off through ignorance as common 
glass. A tulip seed is no less the sheath of a 
flower because through mistake somebody 
has labeled it as common timothy. A silk 
fabric is no less the product of the mulberry- 
feeding worm because somebody has 
wrapped it in a brow^n paper parcel and 
valued it as domestic jeans. What you are, 
you are, and there is no power on earth can 
gainsay it. Other folks may ignore it in 
you ; half the world, nay all the world, may 
fail to see it, but if nobility, and strength, 
and sweetness are there you are worth just 
that much to God ! Blessed thought, isn't 
it, you poor, overworked clerk, with your 
brain always in a muddle with the dry de- 
tails of a business you hate! Blessed 
thought, isn't it, you dear, tired woman with 
more burdens to carry than a maple tree has 
leaves! No matter how impossible it may 
be for you to live out what is in you, that 
something true and grand and beautiful is 
deathless and shall have its chance of de- 
velopment by and by. 

I shall never again meet the pretty maid 
with the larkspur eyes and the corn silk hair 



216 ^o&^mavii^ antf ^ne* 

who traveled with us a part of the way, but 
wherever she goes, joy go with her! She 
was so modest and unspoiled and sweet, I 
declare the sight of such a girl in this day 
of dancers and high-steppers is like the 
sound of "Annie Laurie" between the 
carousals of a break-down jig, or the taste 
of a wild strawberry after pepper tea. God 
bless the old-fashioned girl with her helpful 
ways, her arch face and her blithe and hearty 
laugh. May her type never vanish from the 
face of the earth, and may the mold after 
which her soul was fashioned never get mis- 
laid and lost in the heavenly work-shop. 



^ 



I think I shall be a little sorry when the 
commanding officer sends out the word to 
break camp and leave this dear old earth 
forever. For I love this world. I never 
walk out in the morning when all its radi- 
ant colors are newly washed with dew, or 
at splendid noon, when, like an untired 
racer the sun has flashed around his mid-day 
course, or at evening, when a fringe of shad- 
ow, like the lash of a weary eye, droops over 
mountain and valley and sea, or in the ma- 



jestic pomp of night when stars swarm to- 
gether Hke bees and the moon clears its way 
through the golden fields as a fickle through 
the ripened wheat, that I do not hug myself 
for very joy that I am yet alive. The cruel 
grave has not got me! Those jaws of dark- 
ness have not swallowed me up 'from the 
sweet light of mortal day ! What matter if I 
am poor and unsheltered and costumeless? 
Thank God, I am yet alive! People who tire 
of this world before they are seventy and 
pretend that they are ready to leave it are 
either crazy or stuck full of bodily ailments 
as a cushion is of pins. The happy, the 
warm-blooded, the sunny-natured and the 
loving cling to life as petals cling to the 
calyx of a budding rose. By and by when 
the rose is over-ripe, or when the frosts come 
and the November winds are trumpeting 
through all the leafless spaces of the woods, 
will be the time to die. It is no time now, 
while there is a dark space left on earth that 
love can brighten, while there is a human 
lot to be alleviated by a smile, or a burden 
to be lifted with a sympathizing tear. It 
will be time to die when you are too old or 
too sick to be a comfort in the world, but 
if God has given you a warm heart and a 



218 ^00^ntartj anh ^w^* 

ready hand, look about you and be glad He 
lets you live. Yesterday I was passing 
through the street and I saw a woman stoop 
down and pick up a faded lilac from the mid- 
dle of a crossing and transfer it to a corner 
where it would not be trampled under foot. 
The world wants such people alive in it, not 
buried under its green sods. The heart that 
is not unmindful of a crushed flower will be 
a royal hand in the ministrations of life. May 
the day tarry long on its way that lays in 
the grave such helpful, tender hands that 
seek to do good. 



The good book says, "Love thy neighbor 
as thyself," but it don't say, Tell thy neighbor 
all thy secrets. We can love one another 
without establishing an unsafe intimacy. In 
an age when so little remains set apart and 
sacred, keep the treasury of your inmost 
heart intact. It is a hard thing to believe 
that in every present friend is hidden a pos- 
sible future enemy, but it is safer to shape 
the conduct of our life upon that belief than 
to live to see our inmost thoughts and the 
sanctities of one's heart of hearts hawked 



about like green peas in a street vender's 
basket by a spiteful and treacherous enemy. 
The safest course to pursue in a world so full 
of unfaith and desertions is to be friendly and 
sweet and helpful to all, but communicative 
and confiding to none. 



Once when I was a child, with two long 
yellow braids down my back, and a very 
great capacity for happiness in my heart, I 
lived in a remote country with an aunt who 
didn't believe in any one having too good a 
time here on earth. She thought they would 
appreciate the new Jerusalem all the more, 
perhaps, for having a dismal experience here 
(there are lots like her, too, in the world to- 
day). Well, once afterward when I came 
hoime from school (and, ah! as I write how 
I can see the old road where I walked, wind- 
ing its way under silver birches by the side 
of a trout-brook), somebody came out of the 
house and beckoned wildly, madly for me to 
hurry up. It was my little cousin, and she 
looked as though she had just skipped out 
of heaven ! Her cheeks were all aglow and 
her eyes were shining like stars. "Oh, come ! 



220 ^00i^tnavvi axxlf ^ne* 

Come quick!" she shouted. "There's some- 
thing in the parlor." I made haste to enter, 
and there before me sat a doll, the biggest 
and most splendid it had ever entered my 
young heart to imagine. It was dressed in 
pink tarletan, and had a pair of jeweled ear- 
rings in its exceedingly life-like ears. At 
once I became embarrassed. Self-conscious- 
ness sprang into full being. I was painfully 
aware that my own dress and general appear- 
ance suffered by contrast with the doll. Nor 
have I ever since experienced a keener sen- 
sation of embarrassment than overcame me 
as I faced that gaudy image in wax. My 
aunt's sarcastic remark, "No wonder that 
child's mother can't lay up a cent for a rainy 
day when she throws away her dollars on a 
doll like that!" gave me the sad impression 
that my darling mother was a spendthrift, 
something after the pattern of the prodigal 
son. From the first moment the doll was 
a source of disappointment and sorrow to 
me. I never could play with it with any 
comfort because I was afraid of soiling its 
splendid clothes, losing its earrings, or feel- 
ing myself and my calico and homespun 
abashed by its superior attire. That doll did 
me no good, and just what it did for me its 



costly and extravagantly dressed sisterhood 
is doing for hundreds of little girls to-day. 
Too fine to be played with, rigged out in all 
its paraphernalia of empty headed flesh and 
blood women, with powder, puf¥ and bustles, 
real jewelry and costly lingerie, the mod- 
ern doll is a demoralizer, a torment. 



Protracted broiling is, I think, on the 
whole, more wearing to the sensibilities than 
sudden conflagration. A lightning stroke 
is soon over, but who shall deliver us from 
the torments of dog-days? A bull of Bashan 
encountered in a ten-acre lot may be out- 
run, but who shall escape from a cloud of 
mosquitoes on a windless night? Give me 
any day a life to live with a tempestuous, 
gusty sort of person, and I can endure it, 
but deliver me from existence with one who 
bottles up his thunder and looks like a storm 
that never breaks. A hearty shower, beat- 
ing down the flowers to call them up again 
in fresher beauty, brightening the hills and 
swelling the brooks, treading with musical 
footfall the dusty streets, and lashing the 
violet-tinted lake into a foam-flecked sea. 



222 Ita^^ntttr^ anb ^u^* 

veining the hot air with sudden fire, and call- 
ing out a thousand echoes to answer the 
thunder's call, is it not far better than lower- 
ing skies that look rain and won't yield 
it, dragging, sultry days of neither sunshine 
nor storm? 



^ 



LINES TO MY LOVE. 

When the salt has left the ocean, 
And the moon forgets the sea. 
When with gay and festive motion 
Ox shall waltz with bee. 

When we wash our face in cinders. 

And bake our meat on ice. 
When tender mercy hinders 

The cat from eating the mice. 

When gray heads grace young shoulders 

And icicles form in June, 
When Quakers all turn soldiers. 
And bull frogs sing in tune. 

Then, and not till then, my treasure. 
My darling, tender and true. 

My heart shall claim the leisure 
To think no more of you. 



The other morning, lured by the splendor 
of a golden day, I started to walk to town, 
a distance of twenty-four miles. But after 
the tenth mile the truth was so forcibly and 
increasingly borne in upon me that "all flesh 
is grass," and that the strength of a man (or 
woman either) "Heth not in his heels," that 
I postponed the finish until another day. But 
who shall take from me the glory of the 
start? Shall anybody forget that a sunrise 
was fair and full of promise because the noon 
was clouded and the evening declined into 
rain? Although my twenty-five-mile walk 
ended at the tenth in a rocking-chair, yet 
those ten miles were beautiful and full of 
glory. 

"It will certainly kill you!" wailed the 
martyr as I bade her good-bye. "Oh, will 
it kill her?" echoed the poor little Captain, 
and lifted up her voice in lamentation as I 
vanished from her sight and struck for the 
bluff road. The morning was so beautiful 
that I could imagine the world nothing but 
a big bunch of tulips standing within a crys- 
tal vase in the sun. The maples glistened 
like gold, and were flecked with ruby drops 
that burned and glowed like spilled wine. 
The oaks were russet brown and dusky pur- 



224 ^00ietnavv[ anb ^ne* 

pie, cleft here and there with vivid green, like 
glimpses of a windy sea through shadowed 
hills. The leaves that had fallen to the earth 
were musical underneath the foot, and gave 
forth a faint fragrance that made the air as 
sweet as any bakeshop. The odor of fallen 
leaves and wood shrubs sinking into decay 
is not like any other fragrance so much as 
the scent of well-baked bread, browned and 
finished in summer's ruddy heat. 

The lake — but what can I say to fitly de- 
scribe that translucent sapphire, over which 
a mist hung like a gossamer web above a 
blue-bell, or the haze of slumber upon a 
drowsy eye? As I stood upon the blufif, be- 
fore the road struck landward through the 
woods, I could but extend my arm to the 
glorious expanse of waters and bless the 
Lord with all my soul for so lovely a place 
to tarry in between times. If this world is 
only a stopping-place, a country through 
which we march to heaven, as Sherman 
marched overland to the sea, then thank 
God for so glorious a prelude to eternity; 
and what shall the after harmonies be when 
the broken sounds of idly-touched flutes and 
harps are so divine? 

After leaving Ravinia I proceeded to get 



^o^etnavvi antf ^nic* 225 

lost in the woods. A very small boy and a 
very large dog- were standing by a fence. 
"Does that dog bite?" I asked. "Yes'm," 
promptly replied the sweet and candid child. 
So I climbed a fence and struck for the tim- 
ber. I soon found that all knowledge of 
the points of the compass had failed me. "If 
I am going east," I mused, "I shall soon 
strike the lake ; if west, the track ; south will 
eventually bring me to the Chicago River; 
but a northerly direction will restore me to 
the sleuth-hound. I will say my prayers and 
endeavor to keep to the south." The way 
grew denser. My hat gave me some trou- 
ble, as it insisted upon hanging itself to 
every tree in the wilderness. The twigs 
twitched the hair-pins from my hair and 
poked themselves into my eyes. A few 
corpulent bugs toyed with my ankles and a 
large caterpillar passed the blockade of my 
collar-button and basked in the warmth of 
my neck. I nearly stepped on a snake and 
was confronted by a toad that froze me with 
a glance of its basilisk eye. So I changed 
my course and suddenly entered a little 
woodland graveyard — a handful of neglect- 
ed mounds of earth and silence. No tomb- 
stones marked the graves. A rudely-con- 

15 



226 ^0&i^xnavv[ anb ^u^* 

structed cross of wood, gray with lichens, 
alone told of consecrated ground. There, 
away of¥ from the road in the silence of the 
woods, a few tired hearts were taking their 
rest. Silently I stood a moment, then stole 
away and left the place to its hush of lonely 
peace. What right had I, with my frets and 
feathers, my twig-punctured eye-balls and 
my toad-perturbed nerves, to bring an un- 
quiet presence within this abode of silence 
and of rest? I sat down on a fence-rail a 
moment while, like Miss Riderhood, I deftly 
twisted up my back hair and mused briefly. 
When the time comes, oh, intensely alive 
and happy Amber, for your feet to halt in 
the march, ask to be buried in the woods, 
where your grave will be forgotten and the 
constant years with falling leaves and driv- 
ing snows may have a good chance to ob- 
literate the earthly record of your misspent 
years. 

"Sooner or later the shadows shall creep 
Over my rest in the woods so deep ; 
Sooner or later — " 

But enough of this, my dear. I did not 
intend to incorporate a whole cemetery, an 
obituary discourse, and "lines to the depart- 



ed" in my '^ Glints." After leaving the little 
graveyard I allowed my instincts to carry 
me in a new direction, and soon a rustling 
among the dead leaves, and the sound of 
hushed breathing, convinced me that I was 
approaching a living presence. I felt for my 
revolver. It was there, but unloaded. (I 
would sooner walk arm in arm with death 
than carry loaded firearms.) I advanced 
bravely and became speedily aware of a 
score or so of large and startled eyes, all 
fixed upon me. A half-score of woolly 
heads were lifted, and a flock of sheep stood 
ready to take instant flight if I showed sign 
of battle. "My dear young friends," said I, 
"it is a relief to meet you, and I give you 
good morrow. I fully expected to encoun- 
ter a band of cutthroat tramps who should 
toss pennies for my heart's blood. The bless- 
ings of a rescued woman rest upon your 
crinkly coats, my beauties." A half-hour's 
walk through the woods brought me to a 
clearing where a flock of bluebirds were 
holding council together among the falling 
leaves. They seemed inclined to start south- 
ward, but tarried for one last frohc. How 
beautiful they were as they flitted in and out 
among the golden underbrush no eye but 



228 ^00ietnavvi antf Kw^* 

mine shall ever know. Bluebirds have al- 
ways been associated with thoughts of 
spring and apple-blossoms heretofore. I 
could hardly believe my senses to find them 
here amid the late and falling leaves. For 
a while I loitered in their midst and wished 
for a fairy to change me into one of their 
winged company, that I might forget care 
and find no need of revolvers; but time, as 
sternly announced by my exquisite Water- 
bury, admitted of no delay, so I hied me on- 
ward. At this point in my walk I approached 
a broken gate and a stretch of shockingly 
muddy road. The vanity of confidence in 
any strength that emanates alone from the 
"heels of a man" was by this time beginning 
to make itself felt. I longed to sit down in 
the miry way and go to sleep. A child could 
have played with 'vne despite my revolver, 
and a day-old lamb have gained the 
victory in a personal encounter. At 
this moment, while I Hngered, picking 
my way daintily from tuft to tuft of 
the swamp, I was confronted by a 
tall, gaunt woman. Of course you don't 
believe this; it reads too much like a 
dime novel. You think I am painting my 
picture in lurid tints for public exhibition, 



but in spite of your incredulity I repeat that 
I was confronted by a tall, gaunt woman, 
who appeared as suddenly as though in- 
voked by an evil spell from the mud. The 
woman was shabbily dressed and wore an 
old-fashioned scoop bonnet. She had a 
bundle on her arm, and was dragging by 
the hair of the head, as it were, an indescrib- 
able umbrella. My voice sank out of sight, 
like a stone in the sea, and my feet grew too 
heavy to Hft I stared in silence. "Is your 
name Maria Hopkins?" asked the woman. 

"Indeed it is," I replied, prepared to get 
down on my knees and swear to the truth 
of what I said, if need be. "I thought so," 
said my companion; "let us pray." But I 
didn't stop for prayers. Convinced that my 
time had come, and that I was in the pres- 
ence of a lunatic, I fell over the fence and 
ran. When I was out of breath I looked 
over my shoulder, but the woman was no- 
where in sight. To pursue my walk seemed 
unnecessary, especially as I was nearing the 
house of a friend, so summoning what 
strength was left me I toddled onward, com- 
pleting my tenth mile in five hours from the 
starting. After my sympathizing friend had 
emptied her camphor bottle upon me I 



230 ^00etnavvi ant> |ltt^* 

asked her if she knew a party of the name 
of Hopkins anywhere in town, and if there 
was any resemblance between such a person 
and myself. I saw she thought I was de- 
lirious, and no explanation has ever dis- 
pelled that belief. Some day I shall com- 
plete the walk and write up the finish. 



Said some one to me the other day: 
"Amber, you have lots of good friends 
among the girls." "Good," said I; "then I 
am all right." Anybody who gains the 
friendly approval of the right sort of girls 
has a passport right through to glory! I 
mean it. There is nothing on earth I love 
better than a good, sweet girl. I would rath- 
er watch a crowd of them any day than all 
the pictures Fra Angelica ever painted of 
saints in paradise. But there are girls and 
girls. There is as much difference between 
them as there is between griddle cakes made 
with yeast and griddle cakes in which the 
careless cook forgot to put the leaven. Shall 
I tell you the kind of girl I especially adore? 
Well, first of all, let us take the working girl. 
She is not a "lady" in the acceptance of the 



|l<x^^tnaru an^ glu^* 231 

term by this latter day's hybrid democracy. 
She is just a blithe, cheery, sweet-tempered 
young woman. She may have a father rich 
enough to support her at home, but for all 
that she is a working girl. She is never idle. 
She is studying or sewing or helping about 
the home part of the day. She is romping 
or playing or swinging out of doors the 
other part. She is never frowsy ncr untidy 
nor lazy. She is never rude nor slangy nor 
bold. And yet she is always full of fun and 
ready for frolic. She does not depend upon 
a servant to do what she can do for herself. 
She is considerate to all who serve her. She 
is reverent to the old and thoughtful of the 
feeble. She never criticises when criticism 
can wound, and she is ready with a helpful, 
loving word for every one. Sometimes she 
has no father, or her parents are too poor 
to support her. Then she goes out and 
earns her living by whatever her hands find 
to do. She clerks in a store, or she counts 
out change at a cashier's desk, or she 
teaches school, or she clicks a typewriter, or 
rather a telegrapher's key, but always and 
everywhere she is modest and willing and 
sweet, provided she doesn't get that meddle- 
some little "bee" of "lady"-hood in her bon- 



232 ^o&ttnavvi anb ^n^» 

net If she tries to be a lady at the expense 
of all that is honest and frank in her nature, 
she is like a black baby crying for a black 
kitten in the dark — you can't tell what she is 
exactly, but you know she is mighty dis- 
agreeable. She has too much dignity to be 
imposed upon, or put to open affront, but 
she has humility also, and purity that differs 
from prudishness as a dove in the air differs 
from a stuffed bird in a showcase. She is 
quick to apologize when she knows she is 
in the wrong, yet no young queen ever car- 
ried a higher head than she can upon justi- 
fiable occasions. She is not always imagin- 
ing herself looked dow^n upon because she 
is poor. She knows full well that out of her 
own heart and mouth proceed the only wit- 
nesses that can absolve or condemn her. If 
she eats peanuts in public places, and talks 
loud, and flirts with strange boys, and chews 
gum or displays a toothpick she is common, 
even though she wore a four-foot placard 
emblazoned with the misnomer, "lady." If 
she is quick to be courteous, unselfish, gentle 
and retiring in speech and manner in public 
places, she is true gold, even though her 
dress be faded and her bonnet be old. You 
cannot mistake any girl any more than you 



^o^etnav^ anb ^ne* 233 

can mistake the sunshine that follows the 
rain or the lark that springs from the haw- 
thorn hedge. All things that are blooming 
and sweet attend her! The earth is better 
for her passing through it and heaven will 
be fairer for her habitation therein. God 
bless her! 



^ 



Some day I am going gunning. In a re- 
form dress suit, with the right to vote in my 
pocket, and a shotgun delicately poised upon 
my enfranchised shoulder, I shall start forth 
on my "safety" and proceed to lay low for 
a few victims. The first to perforate with 
my murderous bullet shall be the fiend in 
human guise who toys with my "copy" from 
time to time and makes me spell whether 
without an "h," or so distorts the sense of 
what I write that my best friends wouldn't 
know me from Martin Tupper. I shall show 
no mercy to him. I shall continue to shoot 
until he is perforated like a yard of mosquito 
netting, and I shall leave a little note pinned 
to the lapel of his coat saying that I have 
more bullets left for his "successor in trust." 
If there is one thing that has survived the 



234 ^00^tnavy[ antf ^ne* 

buffetings of a harsh and somewhat discon- 
certing bout with fate it is the knowledge 
that I know how to spell. But even of this 
the fiend in question would deprive me. He 
has brought his fate upon himself and will 
excuse me if I remark that I thirst for his 
gore. 



m 



Dominated by that superfluous energy 
which has, so far, rendered my earthly career 
cyclonic, I called together a confiding 
band during the height of the recent snow 
carnival for the purpose of a sleigh ride. 
The opening up of that sleigh ride was pro- 
pitious. The caravan moved due north, 
bound for a destination that shall be name- 
less. We tried to look upon the attention 
we attracted as a public ovation, but it was 
far more suggestive of the way they used to 
accompany outlaws beyond the limits of a 
mining town, or of the children of Israel 
chased by Pharaoh's mocking hosts. It was 
cold. Our noses, in the light of a wan old 
moon, looked like doorknobs. Our ears 
cracked to the lightest touch, like harp 
strings in the wind. Patient, long-sufifering 



"doctor!" Shall I ever forget how, turning 
to him when the carnival of sport was at its 
height, I murmured: "Are you enjoying 
yourself, dear?" And he replied, with 
ghastly sarcasm: "Tumultuously, my love!" 
So might an arctic frigate, ice-bound, have 
hailed a polar bear. Suddenly, when all 
seemed progressing serenely, we came to a 
standstill, something like what might be ex- 
pected from a runaway horse checked by 
the newly patented electric button. What 
was the matter? Bare ground. Now, under 
ordinary circumstances, the term "bare 
ground" is not synonymous of disaster. But 
if ever in the dispensation of providence it 
falls to your lot to be one of a band of sleigh- 
riding imbeciles then shall those two words 
be to you what snags in the channel are to 
seaward-hastening keels. The driver shout- 
ed and became distinctly profane. "Would 
you please get out and walk over this bad 
place?" said he. With such speed as our 
petrified men.bers would allow we all got 
out, and the women sat on a wayside fence, 
while the men "heaved to" and dragged the 
chariot over about a mile and a quarter of 
bare ground. 

"Shall we make for the nearest line of 



236 ^o^i^xnavy^ an^ ^ne* 

street cars?" asked one of the party, whose 
well-known position as Sunday-school 
superintendent kept him in a state of ab- 
normal calm. "What will become of the 
sleigh and the poor, tired horses?" asked 
that one of the party directly responsible for 
this mad jubilee. 

*'Oh, you women can lead the horses while 
we men carry the old band wagon on our 
shoulders back to shelter." "It is no time 
for jokes," cried one, "I am going home," 
and we all followed suit, to vow later, in the 
shelter of our happy homes, that our future 
attempts at sleigh riding should be confined 
to wheels and the time of roses. 



T^ 



I think I would rather lose this serviceable 
old right hand of mine than have it write 
a word that could be construed into defense 
or encouragement of loud and blatant wom- 
en. The over-dressed and slangy sisterhood 
who parade in public places and storm the 
land these latter days will meet with nothing 
from Amber and her pen but wholesale de- 
nunciation while the lamp of an insignificant 
life holds out to burn. I hate them as a 



Quaker hates gunpowder, and I am more 
than half incHned to beheve that the total 
extermination of the stock would be one of 
the supremest blessings that could be vouch- 
safed to man. The tendencies toward bold- 
ness and effrontery which characterize the 
present day, the unabashed speech and action 
and the manifest lack of old-fashioned cour- 
tesy and the reserve that springs from gentle 
breeding are evils that grow rather than 
diminish. A gentlewoman, a pure, correct 
and lovely gentlewoman, occupies a loftier 
place than any throne, and wields an in- 
fluence more potent than the swing of a 
jeweled scepter. Yet it is never by vulgar 
assumption that she enters into her king- 
dom. The parrot is not a bird we prize, 
although its plumage is resplendent with 
green and purple and gold. In the proud 
breast of the homely and unpretentious 
thrush is hidden the heavenly song. Wher- 
ever gentle forbearance is found, wherever 
patience and tenderness and love idealize 
and sweeten life, there you will find woman 
as heaven meant she should be — the 
crowned queen of hearth and home. And in 
saying all this I do not wish to be under- 
stood as advancing the idea that a woman 



238 ^0&ietnttv%i antf ^ne* 

has no wider scope than home, or that she 
must be all sugar, without any spice. Next 
to the loud and bold-mannered woman as 
a specimen to be detested I would put the 
meek Griselda, with less spirit than a 
boneless herring and less sparkle than tepid 
tea. There is no charm left to femininity 
when you add idiocy to a pretty woman's 
make-up. A fool may be very docile, but a 
fool is not good company. Of the two, per- 
haps, if a man were forced to choose a com- 
rade to share a life that was to be cast on a 
South Sea island, he would do better to take 
the "loud" type. Either would drive him to 
the "cups," if such relief were to be found 
upon an island of the sea. But who would 
not rather go to wreck in a storm than 
founder in becalmed waters? Or, to bring 
it nearer home, who would not rather be 
drowned away out in the middle of Lake 
Michigan in a howling gale than in a gentle 
7x9 cistern? If circumstances call a woman 
out into the thickest of the old bread-and- 
butter fight that has been waging ever since 
Eve ran afoul of the apple, it is to her credit 
if she rolls up her sleeves and goes into the 
thickest of the scrimmage and holds her 
own with the pluckiest of them all. It is 



^0&^tnavtiS cttxt:f ^rnc* 239 

no disgrace to her to be quick to seize an 
opportunity and shrewd to find a point of 
vantage. Let her rank with the men, and 
make ever so fine a name for herself in what- 
ever business vocation she chooses to make 
her own, it will not detract one whit from 
her womanliness, provided she keep herself 
unsullied of soul and tender of heart. The 
moment she lends herself to practices that 
lead men to forget to touch their hats when 
she passes by she becomes unsexed, and a 
sexless woman is worse than a pestilence, 
a cyclone and a strike condensed into one 
vast calamity. No sensible man will think 
any less of a woman if she has spirit enough 
to get downright mad at injustice, insult or 
iniquity. I don't know, though, why we 
women should always get together and com- 
pare notes as to what course of conduct will 
best please the men. They don't He awake 
nights to conform their behavior to ways 
and manners that shall please us; but, even 
putting our argument on the basis of what 
shall win approval from men, I repeat that 
I don't believe that there are many of them 
who would object to a woman knowing how 
to use a pistol or to her carrying one in case 
of an unprotected walk, or a night spent in 



240 ^o&etnavt^ anh ^ne^ 

an unguarded home. There would be few- 
er tales to tell of assaults and woful disap- 
pearances of young women if all our girls 
were versed in the ethics of the revolver. 
Ah, my dear, you can never get a more ador- 
able portrait of a woman to hang upon the 
walls of glorified fancy than the pen-portrait 
drawn by the master hand of Robert Brown- 
ing when he wrote of beautiful Evelyn 
Hope: "God made her of spirit, fire and 
dew." There is the swiftest and most splen- 
did stroke of the artist's brush ever given to 
literature. And yet half the world would 
substitute "putty" for "spirit," "feathers" for 
"fire" and "dough" for "dew." 






The only way to rid the world of bubble- 
marriages — ^^marriages that turn out empti- 
ness with one drop of water as the residuum, 
and that drop a tear — is to educate our girls 
and boys to something higher than playing 
with pipes and soapy water. Give them 
something more earnest to do, and see that 
they do it. Compel men and women to 
choose their life companions with at least a 
tithe of the solemnity they bring to the se- 



gtae^ntartj anlf ^rne* 241 

lection of a carriage horse or a ribbon. Leg- 
islate laws against early marriages. "I 
can't tolerate children," said a little idiot to 
me the other day, "but I adore dogs!" And 
yet that girl had an engagement ring on 
her finger. There should be a special se- 
clusion for such girls until they develop 
some instinct of womanliness, and they 
should no more be allowed to marry than a 
Choctaw chief should be allowed to take 
charge of a kindergarten. You nor I can 
hope to turn a bubble into substance after 
it is once blown. 



Last week I moved. At least I tried to, 
but I haven't fully accomplished the feat yet. 
If it costs one woman a desk and an um- 
brella, the pangs of a seven-horse torment 
to move one block, what must it cost a fam- 
ily of fourteen to move seven wagonloads a 
mile? There is a problem that will keep you 
awake nights. When they said to me : "Oh, 
it will be nothing for you to move !" When 
they pointed with derision at my few be- 
longings I said to myself: "All right; per- 
haps it will be easier than my fears." So I 
packed up my penknife, my mucilage pot, 

16 



242 ^0&]^tntxvvi txnlf ^ui?* 

my paper cutter, my eleven dozen pencils 
and my assortment of stub pens, my violet 
ink, my clock, pictures, calendars, Japanese 
fans, scraps of poetry, magazines, books, 
lemons, buttercups, blotting pads, and sun- 
dry trifles it were waste of time to enumer- 
ate, and sallied forth to find a son of wrath 
to transport them to new quarters. "How 
much will you charge to move two articles 
of furniture one block?" I asked a guile- 
less Scandinavian teamster. "Three dol- 
lars," repHed he with touching promptitude. 
I passed him by, and after two days' search 
found a down-trodden African who said he 
would undertake the job for $1.50. I wish 
you could have seen the look in the darky's 
face when he tried to lift the desk. "Gor-a- 
mighty. Missus, what's in that ar desk?" 
cried he. I had to unpack every blessed 
article but the penknife and a postage stamp 
before he would move the thing, and all the 
long day I trotted back and forth with mar- 
ket baskets full of the original contents of 
that desk. When at last I had them moved 
I couldn't find anything. I wanted my pen- 
cils, but haven't seen 'em yet. The paper- 
weight had smashed the ink bottle, and the 
mucilage had formed a glassy pool in which 



^00!^tnavvi ttntf ^u^* 243 

my buttercups were anchored like islands. 
The frizzes and hairpins and other little 
what-nots that I kept in the right hand 
drawer had dabbled themselves in the ink 
and mucilage and fused themselves into one 
indistinguishable horror. I haven't been 
able to find one thing that I wanted since I 
moved but a toothpick, and that don't look 
exactly natural. The overshoes, and gos- 
samer, and jersey waists, soap and chamois 
skins that I secreted in the left hand drawer 
haven't been seen since they left in the mar- 
ket basket under convoy of the Ethiopian. 
He has probably opened a costumer's shop 
on Halsted street with them. When I move 
again I shall carry my pencils behind my ear 
and my penknife between my teeth. I'll 
never be found a second time stringing my 
beads with a toothpick and relying for time 
upon a clock with the hour hand missing. 
When next I move may it be straight 
through to glory, where the lease is long 
and the landlord never sublets. 

W 

Let anybody in this world really under- 
take to thoroughly do his duty; to do it in 



244 JiSio^^tnavvi anb 3Klu^* 

the face of opposition, prejudice and the 
■meddling interference of fools, and he be- 
comes a target set upon a hill for the conven- 
ient aim of popular scorn. It is harder for 
a man to be true to a principle than it is 
to face a gun. If an employe in the daily 
discharge of duty aims to be prompt, faith- 
ful and fearless he is boycotted by his asso- 
ciates in almost as conspicuous a way as 
was poor little David Copperfield with the 
pasteboard motto on his back. We all of us 
have known in early life the "pet scholar" 
of the school, the dear little virtuous prig 
who never did anything out of the way, who 
never played a prank or accomplished any- 
thing but a pattern pose. Small wonder 
that we hated him! Good behavior, which 
has for its aim merely the disconcerting of 
others and the aggrandizement of one's self, 
is snobbery and should be loathed as such. 
But there is a courage of over-conviction 
which leads a man to hold himself honest 
among thieves, pure among libertines and 
faithful among time-servers and strikers. It 
was such a spirit as this that made dear lit- 
tle "Tom," at "Rugby," loyal to his mother's 
teachings, and led him to kneel amid a 
crowd of jeering boys to say the prayers she 



taught him. It is such a spirit as this that 
holds a man or woman true to the sense of 
justice in an unjust world, and keeps them 
undaunted in the midst of enemies, who hate 
them for doing their duty and caring as 
much for the work as they do for the wages 
that work commands. The man who can 
hold himself beyond the reach of bribery, 
uncorrupted in corruptible times, and sure 
to keep his colors flying, with never a chance 
to trail them in the dust for politic purposes, 
is a greater hero than many a blue-coat who 
marches to battle. Give us a few more such 
heroes, oh, good and merciful dispenser of 
destinies, and sweep ofif the track a hundred 
thousand or so of the eye-servants, time- 
servers and money-graspers who keep the 
profitable places of the world's giving away 
from honest men and faithful women. 






A BOBOLINK'S SONG. 

The earth was awake, and like a gay rover. 
His knapsack of sunshine loose strapped on 
his back. 
Through mists, and through dews, and through 
fine purple clover 
Was faring his way down the summer's green 
track. 



246 ^o&ietnavvi antf ^rne* 

I sat all alone 'neath the shade of a willow, 
And saw the old earth blithely jogging along, 

While over the fields, like the foam on a billow. 
The morning was breaking in blossom and 
song. 

O, list! and, O, hear! like the wing of a swallow, 
Updarting from fields that are golden with 
corn; 
With the ring and the swing of a huntsman's 
"view hallo," 
Some fairy is winding his sweet elfin horn. 

Now up like a fiame, and now down like a 
shower; 
Now here and now there in its sparkle and 
gloom; 
It rings and it swings like a bell in a tower. 
Wide casting its notes as a wind-flower its 
bloom. 

'Tis a bobolink singing among the sweet clover; 

A bobolink whimsical, happy and free, 
And its voice like new wine makes earth, the 
old rover. 
Half tipsy with jollity, clean daft with his 
glee. 



It fell to my lot the other day to witness 
a scene that I shall not soon forget. Death 
has myriad ways of coming to the sons and 



daughters of men, and it chanced that death 
had drawn near to a certain dear woman 
in a way that well might blanch the cheek 
of the bravest hero. As surely condemned 
to die as is the murderer when he hears the 
judge's sentence, with absolute hopelessness 
of any cure, and with the certainty of no 
more than a brief span of weeks wherein 
to live, this brave woman faced her doom 
with all the condemned man's certainty, and 
yet without his shame. Grown old in a life 
of peculiar usefulness, with not a single 
abated enthusiasm and with a heart as keen- 
ly attuned to nature's as is the flute to the 
master's touch, this dear old heroine calmly 
renounced the world she had so loved and 
turned her face direct to "headquarters," 
with no friend to interfere between herself 
and God. For one bitter hour, perhaps, 
she wept and watched alone in her Gethse- 
mane, then turned about to await the chariot 
wheels of her deliverance with a heart as 
glad and a faith as warm and bright as a 
little child's who waits in the shadow the 
coming of a loving father to lead her home. 
Taken to the hospital to die, knowing that 
those doors swung for her last entrance with- 
in any earthly home, fully realizing that from 



248 ^0iktmixvvi anif ^u^« 

beneath that roof her soul should ascend to 
its home beyond the stars, bidding good-bye 
forever to the sunset skies and the rural 
walks that she had so loved, to all the bright 
company of wild flowers she had known by 
name, to the pomp of seasons and the com- 
munion of happy homes, she took up her 
abode in the ward of the incurables. Every 
day she sits in the sunshine and reads her 
books or indites letters to her friends. Every 
day she struggles with devastating pain, and 
every day she grows a little thinner and a 
little weaker in the body, while her soul 
springs heavenward like a white flower from 
the dust, which no earthly blight can reach. 
As I sat by her side the other morning and 
held her wasted hand in mine it seemed the 
most natural thing in the world to send a 
message by this sweet soul to the unseen 
land, and we almost forgot the pain of part- 
ing in the bright anticipation of the many 
who would throng to meet the gray-headed 
voyager when at last her sail should beat 
across the blue waters into the heavenly har- 
bor. And as we talked there came a mes- 
sage that a very old friend had called to see 
the sufferer; one who had been the closest 
comrade of her brilliant youth and the com- 



panion of her maturer years. Slowly the 
guest entered the shrine wherein a soul 
awaited the sacrament of death, silently she 
stretched out her arms and gathered that 
wasted frame within their close embrace. 
As a mother comforts the baby at her breast, 
so they comforted one another with tender 
words. The years of their life fell away 
from them as petals from a rose which the 
wind lightly rocks, and they were girls 
again. "Oh, my dear child, how sweet, how 
brave, how grand you are!" said the guest. 
"My precious girl, my poor, dear one, how 
can I bear to see you here !" she cried again 
and yet again, while her tears fell like rain, 
and the turmoil of her sobs rent her very 
inmost heart. I shall live long before I see 
so touching a sight again. In the presence 
of a love so perfect and so true I felt to be 
almost an interloper and an alien, so I quiet- 
ly stole away and left these two old women, 
bowed with the weight of many years, sus- 
taining and sustained by the trust that the 
portals of the tomb, within whose shadows 
they stood, were but the gates that usher the 
soul into the full affluence of life and love. 



250 ^ojskj^mavx^ antf ^tt^* 

It is almost impossible to get the average 
young person past the florist's window now- 
adays. She has a way of clasping her hands 
and pursing her lips over the roses that 
would make the average young man shed his 
last dollar, as the almond tree shakes its 
blossoms. I am always sorry for a poor 
young man in love with a pretty girl. He 
longs to buy the world for her and she longs 
quite as ardently to receive it as a gift, and 
so he is hurrying along his bankrupt career 
until matrimony or estrangement checks 
him. Have you not a pitying remembrance 
in your own heart of a certain youth of the 
long ago who deluged your house with 
roses, confectionery and novels until his sal- 
ary was wildly wasted in the unequal con- 
tests? Girls, be a little less receptive, as it 
were; be just a bit more thoughtful and deli- 
cate in your orders at the restaurant and 
your selection from the florist's window, and 
I think your matrimonial chances will be 
the better for it. How often have I seen 
a young woman order a costly dinner when 
some young man whom she well knew to be 
the recipient of a small salary was to foot 
the bill, yet when ordering for herself I 
am told she never goes higher than beans 



and bread and butter. Now, girls, don't 
think Amber is an everlasting old grand- 
mother! Not a bit of it, but she has tossed 
about the world so much and heard so many 
"little birds" teUing their secrets that she has 
taken unto herself quite a pack of knowledge 
of the ways and manners of mankind. I 
positively adore a young girl, and always 
have, and, what is more, expect I always 
shall. But admiring and loving them as I 
do, from the tip of their bangs to the click 
of their boot heels, I cannot bear to see them 
do unlovely things. I want to see them help- 
ful, lovable, sweet. I want to see them slow 
to wound another's feelings, and quick as 
sunshine after rain with tender smiles and 
womanly ways. I want to see them brave, 
yet gentle; gay, yet kind; fun-loving, yet 
never loud and rude. I want to hear the 
young men in speaking of them speak of 
something besides their extravagance and 
their greed. I want the very air to be the 
sweeter for their passing, as when one car- 
ries roses through a room their fragrance 
lingers. And what shall make you sweet, 
dear girls? Not fashionable gowns and 
dainty clothing; not beauty nor grace nor 
wealth so much as womanliness and unsel- 
fish thought for others. 



252 JlSic&ietnavt^ atitf Slu^* 



The woman who can wear an arctic over- 
shoe over a No. 5 shoe and make no moan 
ought to have been born a Joan of Arc or a 
Charlotte Corday. She is made of the 
"dust" that heroines have a corner on. At 
one time in my Hfe I owned a dog — a guile- 
less pup — whose darling aim on earth was to 
drag my colossal arctics before admiring 
gentlemen callers and lay them by the fire- 
side, where they overshadowed the big base- 
burner with their bulk. I was rid of the 
dog long before I was rid of the feeling that 
it was a disgrace for a woman to wear the 
feet God gave her. The most colossal over- 
shoe is neither so big nor so objectionable 
as an early grave, and that is just what lies 
before some of you girls if you don't quit 
wearing French heels and going about in 
damp and chilly weather without protection 
for your feet. Burn up the high-heeled slip- 
pers, then, with their atrocious shape ; culti- 
vate health and common-sense rather than 
the empty flattery of a world that cares noth- 
ing for you. So shall you be as beautiful as 
houris, as healthy as Hebes, as long lived as 



^0&ictnavvi anli> |lw^* 253 

Sarahs and as light-footed as the shadow 
that dances to a wind-blown Columbine. 



m 



A graveyard never saddens me. It seems 
nothing more than one of the flies behind 
the scenes when the actors have gone on in 
front. What matters the room where we 
doff our toggery when we are once out of 
it? So, not long since, when in rambling 
about one of the Apostle Islands, away up 
in Lake Superior country, I ran across a 
sunshiny little graveyard, and I was glad 
to loiter about for an hour and read the 
inscriptions on the age-worn stones. It 
was a blue day — blue in the sky above and 
blue in the haze on the hills, blue in the 
sparkling waters of the lake and bluer yet 
in the far distance that marked a score of 
miles from shore. Before the gateway of 
the graveyard a clump of golden rod stood, 
like an angel barring the way with a sword 
of light. A tangle of luxuriant vines had 
curtained most of the graves from sight. 
A few, more carefully tended than the rest, 
stood bravely out from behind fences of 
ornamental woodwork, but most of them 



254 ^o&!Ctnaxv[ ttn^ ^ne* 

were sheltered and peaceful within their ne- 
glected bowers of green. When my time 
comes to lie down in my narrow home, I 
pray you, kind gentlefolks, grant me the 
seclusion of an unremembered grave rather 
than the accentuated desolation of a painted 
fence and a padlocked gate. There is rest 
in neglect, and nature, if left alone, will nev- 
er allow a grave to grow unsightly. She 
folds it away in added coverings of mossy 
green from year to year as a mother when 
the nights are long will tuck her sleeping 
children under soft, warm blankets. She 
appoints her choristers from the leafy belfry 
of the woods to keep the chimes ringing 
when the days are long and slow and sweet, 
and lights her tapers nightly in the wavering, 
shimmer of the stars. In a secluded corner 
we found a handbreadth space where a baby 
was laid to rest many a year ago. No 
chronicle of the little life remains, and yet a 
stranger stands beside its grave and drops 
a tear. I don't know why, I'm sure, for why 
should we cry when a baby dies? So roses 
are picked before the frost finds them! 
Another stone was erected to a young bride 
who died at twenty. Looking about at the 
stoop-shouldered, care-lined and premature- 



ly old women who toiled in those island 
homes, we could not feel very sorry for the 
young bride who died, perhaps, while life 
still held an illusion. With lingering step at 
last we left the graveyard, repassed the gold- 
en sentry at the gate and sought the little 
boat that awaited us on the beautiful bay. 
Long after other details of that pleasant out- 
ing are forgotten the memory of that blue 
day among the quiet graves on the island of 
the great lake shall linger like a song within 
our hearts. 



^ 



"If I had two loaves of bread," said Ma- 
homet, "I would sell one of them and buy 
white hyacinths, for they would feed my 
soul." I came across that delightful saying 
the other day, and I thought to myself: 
There is another one to be hunted up when 
I get over yonder! I shall have to make 
the acquaintance of a man, prophet or not, 
who gave utterance to such a sentiment as 
that. How many of us, poor earthworms 
that we are, would rather spend our dollar 
for white hyacinths than for a big supper? 
How many of us ever stop to think that there 



256 ^o^^ntarij anh Jluje* 

is something under the sleek rotundity of 
our girth that demands food quite as eager- 
ly as our stomach does, and fails and faints 
and dies quite as surely without it? Take 
less of the food that goes to fatten the perish- 
able part of you, and give more sustenance 
to that inner guest who, like a captive, sits 
and starves with long and cruel neglect. 
Buy fewer glasses of beer and more "white 
hyacinths." Smoke less tobacco and invest 
in a few sunsets and dawns. Let cheap 
shows alone and go hear music of the right 
sort. So shall your soul lift up its droop- 
ing head and grow less and less to resem- 
ble one of Pharaoh's lean kine. I adore a 
man or a woman who has enough sentiment 
to appreciate what dead and gone Mahomet 
said, and hereafter will make it a point 
to buy less bread and more hyacinths. 



^ 



I wonder if, when we get to the other 
world, we shall not occasionally stroll into 
some sort of a celestial museum, where the 
relics of our foregone existence, its wasted 
days and misspent years, may stare back at 
us from glass cases where the angels have 



ticketed them and put them all neatly on ex- 
hibition! There will be necklaces of ill- 
spent moments, like the faded brilliants ex- 
humed from old Pompeii, with lots of brok- 
en hopes and thwarted destinies. There 
will be odd little freaks and unreasoning 
caprices, like the "What is it?" and foolish 
deeds of daring to turn our pulses faint with 
the old-time terror. There will be those 
tendencies which kept us heavy-footed like 
the fat woman, and others that made us 
bhnd, although the world was full of light. 
There will be the disloyal deeds that made 
us a constant source of care and wonder- 
ment to the angels who watched us, and 
the cowardice that kept us in leading strings 
to conformity. There will be shelves full 
of the little white lies we have told, all la- 
beled and dated, like pebbles from the Med- 
iterranean or bits of shell from the sea. 
There will be fragments of blighted lives 
ruined by wagging tongues and shafts of 
tea table gossip. There will be the old-time 
masks wherein we masqueraded, and the 
flimsy veils of deceit behind which we hid 
our individuality. There will be the mem- 
ories of little children we might have kept 
had we been wiser, and snatches of lullaby 

17 



258 Itjcr^^tnttrtj ant> ^tt^* 

songs. There will be jars full of love 
glances and pots of preserved and honeyed 
kisses. There will be whole bales of mis- 
takes, a Gobelin tapestry to drape the world, 
and stacks of dead and withered "might- 
have-beens." There will be peacock feath- 
ers of pride tied together with faded rib- 
bons of regret, and whole cabinets full of 
closet skeletons and family contentions. 
There will be pedestals whereon shall stand 
the "white days" we can never forget, and 
panorama chambers wherein shall be un- 
rolled the pictured scroll of our journey 
heavenward. In cunningly devised music 
boxes we shall hear again the melody of our 
youthful laughter and the patter of life's un- 
counted tears. I think the shelves of that 
celestial museum would yield some odd sur- 
prises to the most of us, like the finding of 
a bauble we counted worthless and threw 
away glittering in the diadem of a crown, 
or the prize we bartered honor for turned 
to worthless glitter and tinsel paste! 

I 

There is no use sitting here by this win- 
dow any longer and trying to believe that 



^o&]^tnavi^ fxnb ^u^* 259 

life is worth living. If I looked for five 
minutes more at this November landscape I 
should shave my head and hie me to a 
Carmelite convent. Dame Nature has for- 
gotten her housewifely duties and gone off 
to gossip with the good ladies who have 
charge of the other planets. Where but yes- 
terday the late asters bloomed in long rows 
of splendor, and the chrysanthemums 
fringed the sunny borders with feathers of 
white and gold, the unsightly stalks grovel 
in the clayey mold, and the frost-nipped 
vines drop their dismantled tendrils in the 
chilly wind. Fragments of old china lurk 
in the discovered spaces underneath the de- 
nuded lilac bushes, and out by the oleander 
tub a cruel cat is worrying a large and dis- 
couraged rat. That oleander tub reminds 
me an ordeal that is ushered in with every 
change of season. Twice a year we are 
compelled to carry that large vegetable in 
and out of its winter lair. About the last 
week of September we begin to wrap it in 
bed-quilts every night, and from that time 
on until late autumn no delicate babe was 
ever more tenderly guarded. Then, as 
there is no man in the country who for love 
or lucre will condescend to the job, we begin 



260 ^u^^mary an^ ^tt^* 

to worry the Doctor. We tell him the 
oleander will be blighted by the frost, and 
he pays no heed. Then we ask him if he 
would just as lief bring in the oleander after 
supper. He sneaks ofif and is gone until the 
II p. m. train. Next we take to tears, and 
declare that we love that oleander as one 
of the family, and it breaks our heart to see 
it perish for want of care. We grow pale 
and wan and gray-headed as the days go by, 
and finally with flashing eyes and muttered 
oaths the Doctor yanks the tub and its co- 
lossal growth into the cellar, and we rest 
on our arms until the advent of another 
spring. 



Well, the summer has gathered up her 
corn-silk draperies, put on her rose- 
trimmed hat, and tripped over the border 
land at last. From the bend in the road that 
shall hide her from our view forever she 
lingers a moment to throw back a sunny 
glance at September, as he comes whistling 
down the lane, with plume of golden-rod 
in his hat. A glad good-bye to you, long- 
to-be-remembered summer of 1890! We are 



gta^^ntctru ixnt:f glu^* 26i 

so glad to see you go that we are willing 
to forego your blossoms and your bird songs 
to be well rid of you. For three long months 
we have endured heat without precedent, 
drought and discomfort, flies and mosqui- 
tos, threatened thunder gusts and devastat- 
ing cyclones, and we are so tired that we 
feel like shaking a stick at you now, to see 
you lingering to coquet with September. 
Hasten on, oh bright autumn weather, with 
your comfortable nights for sleep, and your 
royal days of sunshine and frost. We are 
longing for the time to come when the 
lamps shall be lighted early in the parlor, 
and the fire-glow shall once more shed its 
glory upon grandma's lovely hair and upon 
the gold of the children's restless heads; 
when the cat shall have leave to lie on the 
best cushion, and the voice of the tea-kettle, 
droning its supper monologue, shall alter- 
nate with the efforts of the older sister at the 
piano. By the way, do you know there is 
lots of solace to be found in an old music 
book of twenty years ago? Don't tell me 
that the music of to-day is as sweet all 
through as the melodies of long ago. Who 
sings such soul-ravishing duets to-day as 
"She Bloomed with the Roses," "Twilight 



262 ^c^i^ntavvi an^ ^u^* 

Dews," or "Gently Sighs the Breeze"? I 
declare to you, my dear, that although I 
shall be considerably older some day than 
I am now, and although I have not fallen 
so far into the "sere and yellow" as to count 
myself among the old-fashioned and the 
queer, yet any one of those songs just men- 
tioned will start the tears from my eyes as 
showers start from summer clouds. 

Two little motherless children! Do you 
know the thought of a baby without a moth- 
er to cuddle it always brings the tears to my 
eyes? Traveling to distant New England 
with a father who, although kind, seemed 
some way unfitted to his duties, as a straight- 
legged chair might if used for a lullaby 
rocker, were two bits of folks, a boy and a 
girl, one four, the other two years old. The 
careful father brushed their hair very nicely 
and washed their mites of faces with great 
regularity. When he told them to sit still 
they sat still, and nobody was annoyed by 
their antics, but, oh, how it made my heart 
ache to watch the motherless chicks! If 
mamma had been there they would have 



^o^i^tnavvi antf ^«^* 263 

climbed all over her, and bothered her a 
good deal, perhaps, with their clinging arms 
and kisses (it's a way babies have with their 
mammas!), but in the presence of their dark- 
eyed and quiet papa they behaved like little 
weasels in the presence of a fox. "Papa 
says we mustn't talk about mamma any 
more," lisped the boy. " 'Cause she's gone 
to heaven." In the name of love, whose 
apostle I humbly claim to be, I longed to 
gather those little ones in my arms and have 
a dear, sweet talk about the mamma who 
had left them for a little while, and I wanted 
to say to the proper and punctilious papa: 
"Good sir, if you attempt to bring up these 
motherless mites without the demonstration 
of love you will meet with the same success 
your gardener would should he set out roses 
in a pine forest. Children need love as flow- 
ers need the southerly exposure and sun- 
shine. When that boy of yours bumped 
his head, sir, it was your place to comfort 
him in something the way his dead mother 
might have done, rather than to have bade 
him 'sit up and be a man.' " 



264 |lo0^tnarij anb glu^* 

SLEEP'S SERENADE. 

In cadence far, 

From star to star, 
Sleep's mellow horns are faintly calling; 

Through dreamland halls 

Sweet madrigals, 
In liquid numbers drowsy falling. 

Noiseless and still, 

O'er star-watched hill. 
Beneath the white moon's tender glances, 

A host of dreams. 

By wind-blown streams, 
March on with gleam of silver lances. 

A captive thou; 

Then, yield thee, now, 
While mellow horns are nearer calling; 

And ringing bells. 

And poppy spells, 
Thy senses all in sleep enthralling. 

O, hark;0, hear, 

My lady, dear. 
O'er woods and hills and streamlets flying, 

The winding note 

Of horns remote. 
In softest echo dying— dying. 



I had a dream the other night which was 
like, and yet unlike, the vision of fair women 



of which a poet once wrote. I dreamed that 
I sat within a court-room. Before me passed 
the meanest men and women God ever per- 
mitted to Hve, and upon them I was to pass 
the verdict as to which should carry off the 
palm. The scandal-monger came first, he 
or she who sits like a fly-catcher on a tree, 
snapping up morsels of news. He or she who 
is swelled full of conjecture whenever any- 
body commits an innocent indiscretion, as 
an owl blinks and ruffles up its feathers 
when the bobolink sings. He or she who 
goes about the world like a lean cat after 
a mouse. He or she who is always looking 
for clouds in a bright June sky, and slugs in 
roses and flies in honey. He or she whose 
heart is made of brass, and whose soul is 
so small it will take eleven cycles of eternity 
to develop it to the dimension of a hayseed. 
I was about to hand this specimen the ban- 
ner without looking further when a being 
glided by me with a noiseless tread. She 
wore felt shoes and a mask. She spoke 
with the voice of a canary, yet had the talons 
of a vulture. She wore a stomacher made 
from the fleece of a lamb, and between her 
bright red lips were the tusks of a wolf. I 
recognized her as the hypocrite, the false 



266 ^00!etnavvi antu ^tt^* 

friend; she who hands over your Hving 
bones for your enemies to pick, while you 
beheve she is your champion and your de- 
fender. Following her came the man who 
keeps his horse standing all day with its nose 
in a nosebag. There was a groan like the 
sighing of wind in the poplars as he went by. 
Then came the merciless man who oppresses 
and torments the helpless and grinds the 
faces of the poor; and following him I be- 
held yet another monster — the worst of all 
in male attire. He came sneaking around 
a corner, with a smile on his lips and a devil 
in his eye, seeking to entrap innocent girl- 
hood and unsuspecting womanhood. Then 
came the woman who gives her children to 
the care of servants while she goes down- 
town with a dog in her arms. Then came a 
lean-faced, weasel-eyed creature with the 
general expression of a sneak thief. I dis- 
covered her to be the representative of that 
type of women who coaxes her neighbor's 
hired girl away with promises of better 
wages. Then came the envious person 
whose evil passions are kindled like the fires 
of sheol at the prosperity of others, and who, 
because his own cup of life holds vinegar, is 
determined no other shall contain wine. I 



suddenly awoke without having bestowed 
the palm on any. Perhaps some of my read- 
ers may find it easy to do that for themselves. 



it 



Do you know which, of all the sights that 
confronted me yesterday in my rambles 
through the rainy weather, I pigeon-holed 
as the saddest? Not the little white cas- 
ket, gleaming like the petal of a fallen flower, 
through the undertaker's rain-streaked win- 
dow; not the woman with the lack-luster 
eye and the flippety-floppety petticoats who 
went by me in the rain silently cursing her 
bundles and the fact that she was not three- 
handed ; not the poor old cab horse with his 
nose in a wet bag, and his stomach so tightly 
buckled in that he couldn't breathe below the 
fifth rib; not the man out of a job, with his 
gloveless hands in his pockets, trying to 
solve the problem of supper; not the little 
child under convoy of a stern and relentless 
dragon who yanked it over the crossings by 
the arm socket; not the starved and abso- 
lutely hopeless yellow dog, who sat in a 
doorway and wondered to himself if there 
was indeed a canine life that included occa- 



268 J^jcr^jemartj ant> Ku^* 

sional bones and no kicks; no, not any of 
these impressed me as the most gruesome of 
a great city's many sights. As I passed the 
corner of Washington and Dearborn streets 
I came face to face with a red-cheeked, 
wholesome boy of barely twenty years of 
age. He was leaning upon the arm of an 
elderly man, and at first I thought him ill, 
but it took but a second glance to see that 
he was drunk. Now, I consider that the 
very saddest sight a great city has to offer. 
When the old men are wicked there is some 
comfort in the thought that their day is 
nearly spent, and their worthless places may 
be soon filled with a nobler and a better 
stock, but a drunken and dissolute boy 
means just what it means for the fruit har- 
vest when the blight gets into the blossom. 
The gathered apple that rots in the bin is 
bad enough, but the worm that destroys the 
fruit in the germ makes greater loss. Be 
thankful that the grave has taken to its pro- 
tecting shelter the boy you loved so dearly, 
and of whom you were so proud, rather than 
that he should have grown to be a drunkard 
before his twentieth birthday. 



^0&enxaxt^ axx^ ^xxc^ 269 

We are each of us missing constant 
chances to bestow a kindness upon some 
needy soul for the reason that we dread 
being imposed upon by a case of causeless 
complaining. Is it worth while to keep our 
hearts stolid merely because we may be 
cheated in the bestowal of a nickel's worth 
of alms? I think not. You looked up 
from your work a few minutes ago and saw 
a little boy not much bigger than your 
thumb looking through the open doorway. 
He began at once a sing-song tale of woe 
about a sick mother and a father out of 
work — or in his grave, it doesn't much 
matter. At the same time he held out 
a paper of cheap pins to tempt a nickel from 
your store. 

"I have no time to bother with such as 
you," you said, and turned your eyes back 
to your ledger. But still the boy droned on. 
You looked at him again and noticed that 
the small hand that held the pins was well 
kept and very, very thin. Then your eyes 
followed the diminutive form down to the 
feet; they, too, showed signs of somebody's 
care, although the shoes were shabby and 
the stockings thin. 

"He is not an ordinary little beggar," you 



270 ^0&J^tnav1i^ ^^n^ $ltt^* 

said to yourself. And then your gaze trav- 
eled upward again until it met his long- 
lashed Irish eyes, so full of trouble and of 
entreaty that they looked like twin Killar- 
ney lakes getting ready for rain. 

"Poor little chap," you said, "of course I'll 
buy a paper of pins," and in so doing you 
stooped over and patted his head, perhaps, 
or called him "dear," so that he went away 
with the twin Killarney lakes all ready for 
a sunburst to follow the rain. That was an 
opportunity you nearly missed, but it 
brought a blessing sweeter than a Crawford 
peach. You didn't want the pins, but the 
little desolate heart wanted the kind word 
bestowed along with your nickel, and per- 
haps its bestowal shall be an impulse to- 
ward the light to a soul that cross words 
and constant refusals had already given a 
downward trend. 



^ 



There stands a very young girl at the 
door of a drug store. She hesitates a mo- 
ment and enters. "May I sit here and wait 
for a friend?" she inquires of the dapper 
clerk. "Certainly," he answers, and places 
a chair for her near the window. 



^o^i^mavt^ antJr ^u^* 271 

That girl's father told her last night to 
have nothing more to do with young Solo- 
mon Levi. "He is a worthless fellow," said 
he, "and I have forbidden him the house." 
"Very well," said she, and this morning she 
has made the excuse to go to the grocery 
for yeast, and is waiting here for the grace- 
less Solomon. By and by he will come, and 
she will listen to him and form plans for 
clandestine meetings. My dear, there is 
a stairway whose top lies in the sunshine, 
but whose lower steps lead down to endless 
shadow. Your pretty foot is poising on the 
upper stair — beware! And yet I think the 
father has been to blame also. These stern, 
non-explanatory parents are responsible for 
much of the ruin wrought in young people's 
lives. If the old rat would go with the young 
one now and then to investigate the smell of 
cheese, his restraining presence would do 
more good than all the warnings and threats 
beforehand. Temptations are bound to be- 
siege the girls and bewilder the boys. Don't 
let us make a pit-fire out of moonshine and 
forbid every bit of innocent fun and frolic 
because there is a gayety that takes hold on 
death. Give the young folks a little more 
license, mingle with them in many amuse- 



272 ^Jd&etntxvi^ anlf ^u^* 

ments which you have been wont to frown 
upon, do not be so frightened if their light 
feet go dancing off the path now and then, 
and ten to one the end of the journey will be 
Beulah Land and peace. A good deal less 
faultfinding and a good deal more sympathy 
would be better all around. 



^ 



There is no lot on earth so hard to bear 
as the lot of wedlock where love has failed. 
The slave's life is not comparable to it, for 
the manacles that only bind the hands may 
be laid aside, but those that fetter the heart 
not death itself holds the key to loosen. It 
fairly makes me tremble when I see the 
thoughtless rush young people make to en- 
ter what is by far the most solemn and re- 
sponsible relation of Hfe. They are like 
mariners who put to sea in flimsy boats, or 
like explorers who fit themselves with Prince 
Albert suits and buttonhole bouquets. Be- 
fore you get through the voyage, my dears, 
you will encounter tempests as well as bon- 
nie blue weather, and God pity you when 
your pleasure craft strikes the first billow, 
if it was made of caprice and put together 



^o&i^tnavi^ anlr ^n^* 273 

with mucilage instead of rivets ! As for the 
explorer and his dress suit, where will he 
be when the tigers begin to scent him and 
the air is full of great sorrows and little 
frets like flying buzzards and cawing crows? 
Be an old maid in its most despised sig- 
nificance then ; be a grubber and a toiler all 
the days of your life rather than rush into 
marriage as a hunted fox flies into a trap. 
There is some chance for the fox that flies 
to the hills, and for the bird that soars above 
the huntsman's aim, but what better off is 
the fox in the trap or the lark in a cage? 
There is a love so pure and ennobling that 
eternity shall not be long enough to cast its 
blossom, nor death sharp enough to loosen 
the foundation of its hold. Such love is born 
in the spirit rather than forced in the hot- 
house of the senses. It is an impulse toward 
the stars, a striving toward things that are 
pure and perfect and true. It grows in the 
heart as a rose grows in the garden, first a 
slip, then a leaf and finally the perfect blos- 
som. No rose ever put forth a flower first, 
and then bethought itself of rooting and 
budding. Pray, dear girls, that this love 
may come to you rather than its poor proto- 
type, so current in a world of shams and 

18 



274 ^c^etnavt^ ant> |lu^* 

pretenses, whose luster corrodes with daily 
usage and turns to pewter in your grasp. 



Once there was an old woman who died 
and went to glory. Now a great many old 
women have died and gone the same way, 
but this one was very tired and very glad to 
go. She had worked hard ever since she 
could handle a broom or flirt a duster. 
She had probably washed about 91,956,045 
dishes in her life, had baked something less 
than a million of pies, and turned out any- 
where between a quarter to half a million 
loaves of bread, to say nothing of biscuits. 
These figures are steep, but I am writing 
under the invigorating impulse of the grip ! 
She had darned socks and hemmed towels 
and patched old pantaloon-seats between 
times, until her fingers were callous as agate. 
She had borne and reared lots of children 
and tended to their myriad wants. 
For forty-seven years she had done a big 
washing every week, and laundried more 
collars than a Canada thistle has seed-pods. 
At last she died. The tired old body burst 
its withered husk and let the flower free. The 



rusty old cage flew open and out went the 
bird. And when they buried her I suppose 
they were fooHsh enough to shed tears and 
put on mourning! As well expect all the 
birds to wear crape when dawn sets out its 
primrose-pot on the ledge of the eastern sky! 
But one friend of quicker perception than 
the rest, I am told, placed the following in- 
scription on the tired old woman's grave- 
stone : 

Here lies a poor woman who always was tired. 
For she lived in a world where much was re- 
quired. 
"Weep not for me, friends," she said, "for I'm 

going 
Where there'll be neither washing, nor baking, 

nor sewing; 
Then weep not for me; if death must us sever. 
Rejoice that I'm going to do nothing forever." 

There is just one thing in the latter part of 
the nineteenth century that never fails to 
bring success, and that is assurance. If you 
are going to make yourself known it is no 
longer the thing to quietly pass out a visit- 
ing card — you must advance with a trumpet 
and blow a brazen blast to shake the stars. 



276 ^o^^ntttrtj ctnlr ^vte* 

The time has gone by when self-advance- 
ment can be gained by modest and unassum- 
ing methods. To stand with a Hfted hat and 
solicit a hearing savors of mendicancy and 
an humble spirit. The easily abashed and 
the diffident may starve in a garret, or go 
die on the highways — there is no chance for 
them in the jostling rush of life. The gilded 
circus chariot, with a full brass band and a 
plump goddess distributing circulars, is 
what takes the popular heart by storm. 
Your silent entry into town, depending upon 
the merits of your wares to gain an audience 
or work up a custom, is chimerical and ob- 
solete. We no longer sit in the shadow and 
play flutes; we mount a pine platform and 
blow on a trombone, and in that way we 
draw a crowd, and that is what we live for. 
Who are the women who succeed in business 
ventures of any sort? Mostly the mannish, 
bold, aggressive amazons who are unmind- 
ful of rebuflfs and impervious to contempt. 
Who are the men who wear diamonds and 
live easy lives? Largely the politicians who 
have made their reputation in bar-room ros- 
trums and among sharpers. Oh, for a 
wind to blow us forward a hundred years 
out of this age of sordid self-seeking and 



impudent assertiveness into something larg- 
er and sweeter and finer. Give us less yeast 
in our bread and more substance; fill our 
cups with wine rather than froth, and for 
sweet pity's sake hang up the great Ameri- 
can trumpet and let "silence, like a poultice, 
come to heal the blows of sound." 



Every day, for months, as I have taken 
my morning ride to town I have noticed a 
dog who bounds forth from a dooryard that 
overlooks the busy highway of the steed of 
steam and barks himself weak at the rush- 
ing trains. He really accomplishes nothing, 
but do you suppose you could convince his 
canine brain that he was not at once a re- 
proach and a terror to the numerous trains 
that disturb his rest? He reminds me of 
certain people we meet all the way through 
life. They bark at trains continually while 
the Lord prolongs their breath, and the 
faster the train and the more it carries the 
louder they bark. They fondly imagine 
that the voice of their ranting protest accom- 
plishes a purpose in the world. They are 
always barking at capital and at rich men 



278 Jticr^^tnaru txntf ^u^* 

and at corporations. They bark at people 
of courteous manners, and all the ways and 
customs of polite and gentle society, with 
fierce and futile yelpings. They bark at 
the swift advancement of the world from ig- 
norance to enlightenment, from superstition 
to liberalism. They bark at the churches 
because they are on a train that has side- 
tracked Calvin. They bark at polite young 
men who wear clean Hnen, and call them 
dudes; they bark at women who have one 
or two ideas outside of fashionable folly and 
inane conventionalism, and call them 
cranks; they bark at everything on wheels, 
where wheels typify strength and achieve- 
ment. They will go on barking, too, while 
the world finds room and maintains patience 
for them and their barking. 



I think I have said before that I loathe 
meek people. But even if I have I am going 
to say it again. Your half-wits who sit and 
turn first one cheek and then the other to be 
slapped are not the sort for me. The man 
or woman, boy or girl, child or otherwise, 
that will endure direct insult day after day 



without resenting it ought to sell themselves 
at so much a pint for illuminating oil — that 
is all they are good for. I love a fighter, pro- 
vided he foils gracefully and does not snatch 
out his sword in every brawling and un- 
worthy cause. In the defense of woman, in 
the cause of honor, purity and truth; in bat- 
tle against sordidness, and greed, and a 
lying tongue, let your blade flash Hke sum- 
mer rain and your white plume outdistance 
the plume of Navarre ! For God and moth- 
er, justice and honor, self-respect and the 
approval of our own conscience, let us go 
forward then with a chip, if need be, on 
each shoulder and a standard copy of the 
celestial army tactics in our side pocket! 
The Lord loves a good many things, cheer- 
ful givers and self-sacrificing widows with 
their mites, merciful men and sweet and 
noble women, but most of all, I think, he 
loves a valiant fighter in the cause of right. 

r 

Now it came to pass that there dwelt in 
a certain city of the land of the great lakes 
a woman called Lydia, sister to Simon, the 
shipwright. And Lydia, being comely and 



280 ^jcr^^ntartj ant^ ^ne* 

fair to look upon, was sought in marriage 
by one John, a dealer in spices and fine teas. 
And the years of their wedlock having out- 
numbered the fingers upon a man's two 
hands, it came to pass that they dwelt to- 
gether in exceeding prosperity in a town 
near by the blue waters of a mighty lake. 

And Heaven sent unto them children to 
the number of three, so that their hearts 
were exceeding glad, and the cords of their 
habitation were stretched from year to year. 
And it came to pass that the home in which 
they lived was spacious and full of salubri- 
ous air. Their beds, also, were of curled hair, 
and all their bed-springs of beaten steel. 
And bath-rooms made glad the heart of the 
dust-laden when summer dwelt in the land. 
Also there were cunningly devised screens 
of fine wire in all the windows, so that the 
marauding fly and the pestilential mosquito 
might not enter. 

And the flesh increased from year to year 
upon the bones of Lydia and the children 
that heaven sent her, while they remained in 
the home that John, the tea merchant, had 
given them. 

But it came to pass that the neighbors of 
the woman Lydia closed up the shutters of 



Jl00^wtarjj antf ilu^> 28i 

their dwellings, and one by one stole from 
town when the heat descended upon the 
land. 

Then spake Lydia unto John, the vender 
of spices and fine teas, saying: 

"Arise, let us go hence and dwell within 
a farm-house, where the children may leap 
together in the sweet-smelling hay, and I 
may comfort myself with flagons of cream." 

But John, being a man among men, and 
accounted somewhat wise withal, would 
have restrained Lydia, saying: "Not so; for 
verily I say unto you, comfort abideth not 
in the dwelling of the farmer, neither does 
joy linger in the shadow of his doorway." 

Now Lydia, being president of a Wom- 
an's Club and reputed of knowledge beyond 
the generality of womankind, would not 
listen, but beat her hands together, crying: 
"I prithee hold thy peace, for behold, I and 
the children heaven sent me will depart 
hence by to-morrow's chariot of steam, and 
will make our home with the gentle farmer 
and his sweet-breathed kine." 

So John, being loth to war with the 
tongue, albeit he was heavy-hearted and 
walked with a bent head, purchased tickets 
for Lydia and the children heaven had giv- 
en her. 



282 ^o&ietnavvi ttnlr |lue* 

And it came to pass that they left town by 
the train which men call "the limited." 

Now the way of that train through the 
land is like unto the way of a ship at sea, 
or of a strong eagle that never wearieth. 
And the sufferings of Lydia were such that 
she sought relief in peppermint and found 
it not. 

And the babes by reason of the swift- 
ness with which they traversed a crooked 
land, were made ill and languished like 
sea-sick rangers of the deep. 

Yet, after many hours, their torment 
abated not, so that, reaching their desti- 
nation, the bodies of Lydia and her chil- 
dren were removed in a hack and hurried 
to an inn that was built near by. 

And in the inn where they were fain to 
tarry until strength should be given them 
for further journeying, it chanced that a 
young babe lay sorely stricken with the 
whooping-cough. 

Now, when Lydia knew this, her heart 
fainted with fear, and she prophesied evil. 

For well she knew that her own babes 
had not had the disease, and that the time 
of their prostration was at hand. 

So Lydia, being president of a Woman's 



^o&ietnavvi an^ ^ue* 283 

Club, and accounted without a peer in the 
gift of words, sent for the keeper of the 
inn, that she might rebuke him. 

And she opened her mouth impulsively 
and questioned him saying: "Why brought- 
est thou me and the children heaven gave 
me into thine inn knowing that contagious 
disease lurked within its gates?" 

And the keeper of the inn shot out the 
lip at her and was undismayed. 

And he cried, *'Go to! And what wouldst 
thou of a public house? Thou talkest like 
one with little sense!" 

And it came to pass that Lydia and her 
children departed thence by stage and 
sought the farm-house. And, arriving there, 
they would have laid themselves down to 
rest, being sorely bruised by reason of pro- 
tracted stage-riding. 

But the beds were made of straw and 
corded underneath with ropes. So that 
lying upon them caused the children to roar 
loudly, and they found rest from their lam- 
entations, four in a bed, on the bosom of 
Lydia. 

And, supper being served, it consisted of 
tinted warm water and gooseberries sweet- 
ened with brown sugar. 



284 ^0&!etnavvi anb ^nie. 

Now Lydia, by reason of her connection 
with the club, was enabled to speak boldly, 
and she called for cream. 

But the wife of the farmer made answer, 
saying, "We have none." 

And Lydia spoke yet again, saying, 
*'Why, O woman of many wiles, hast thou 
no cream?" 

And the woman made way with an in- 
sect that swam gaily in a pitcher of azure 
milk, and said gently, "Because we sell it 
to a neighboring dairy." 

And Lydia said nothing, but remember- 
ing the words of John, the tea-merchant, 
wept silently. 

And it came to pass that next morning 
the children went forth to leap in the hay. 

And the farmer led them firmly away 
from the hay-mow by the tip of the ear, 
saying, "I allow no children to spoil my 
fodder." 

And the morning of the second day, the 
woman Lydia, being starved for nutritious 
food, wended her way with her babes across 
a stretch of pasture land in search of wild 
blackberries. 

And a beast, whose voice was baritone 
and whose approach was Hke the approach 



^0&i^tnavv[ antf ^rnc* 285 

of a Kansas cyclone, bore down upon her 
and the children heaven had given her, 
while yet they were midway in the meadow. 
Now only by leaping could they save them- 
selves. 

And it came to pass that they leaped 
mightily and flung themselves over a five- 
barred fence. 

And a snake made free with the draperies 
of Lydia, so that her hair whitened with 
fear, and between the beast with the bari- 
tone voice and the serpent she knew not 
which way to turn. 

And the morning of the third day she 
wrote to John, the tea-merchant, saying 
only: 

"My darling — Meet the first train that re- 
turns from this place to the dear city by the 
lake, for behold ! I and the children heaven 
sent me are on our homeward way !" 



IMPATIENCE. 

A sweet little crocus came up through the mold, 
And hugged round her shoulders her mantle of 

gold, 
While tears of distress fringed her delicate eye. 
Like rain drops that start from a showery sky. 



286 glo^^ntitru antf ^m^* 

"Where, pray, are those laggards, the violets 

blue? 
The roses and lilies and daffodils too? 
I really think it's a shame and a sin 
This waiting so long for the spring to begin. 

"The first day of April and only one bird 
Since I lifted my head has uttered a word! 
And search as I may all over the meadow 
Not even a cowslip has shown its bright head, O- 

"Misery me! Sure there's no use in waiting, 
For something, no doubt, is the summer belating; 
So I'll go back to bed, put on my lace night cap. 
And snatch, for a fortnight, a nice little cat- 
nap!" 

Down went little Gold-head, back to her pillow; 
When, all in a twinkling, up over the hill, O, 
The wind-flower host, with rose-tinted banners, 
Marched into the world; Queen Summer's fore- 
runners. 

Her rose maids of honor, in filmiest laces. 
Loitered and lingered in shy woodland places; 
And white-vested lilies were ever at prayer; 
Their vespers, the perfume that sweetened the 
air. 

The apple trees blushed into delicate splendor; 
Theblue birds hung over in ecstasy tender, 
While the gold powdered bee with helmet all 

dusty 
Kept watch over the flowers, a sentinel trusty. 



The robin sang love to his shy little sweetheart; 
The orioles lashed their nests in the tree top; 
The willows drooped low over swift water 

courses, 
And murmuring brooks started fresh from their 

sources. 

But down in the gloom, on her dream-haunted 

pillow. 
As pale and as cold as the moon on the billow, 
Forgot and unmissed by bird and by blossom. 
The crocus slept sound in the earth's faithful 

bosom. 

When at last she awoke, the spring had been 

banished. 
Her forerunner flowers from the hillside had 

vanished. 
And all of the bees had turned into stock brokers. 
And even the birds had changed into croakers. 

'Tis only by waiting we find our fruition; 
To learn how to wait is a needed tuition. 
The faint-hearted people who go to sleep fretting, 
"Will wake up at last too late for the getting. 



If there is anything more utterly deso- 
late than a poorly-conducted farm, preserve 
me from it. There is an ideal farm familiar 
to the writers of pretty tales, where every- 



*>. 



288 j^o^jentarij anb Kw^* 

thing is kept in apple-pie order throughout 
the year, and where one can walk broadcast, 
so to speak, in a spick and span white gown 
without attracting so much as the shadow of 
a shade of minutest defilement. We have 
seen pictures of such farms wherein sleek 
cattle stood around knee-deep in dewy 
clover, or lay serenely on polished hillsides, 
or meandered dreamily by crystal streams; 
wherein pale pink farm-houses with green 
gables and yellow piazzas, fairly scintillated 
from behind decorous foliage, and peacocks, 
with tails nearly as long as the Mississippi 
River, posed on the gate-posts; wherein 
neat little boys in variegated trousers rode 
prancing chargers down blooming lanes, 
and correct little girls in ruffled undercloth- 
ing fed well-mannered chickens from morn- 
ing till night. But the actual farm of the 
remote rural districts is about as much like 
its ideal picture as Esau was like a modern 
dude. Not long ago somebody suggested 
that I go and board for a fortnight at a farm- 
house. "You will have perfect rest," said 
my friend, "and that is what you need." So 
I went, and rather than again undergo the 
torments of the five days spent in that rest- 
ful (?) spot I think I would cheerfully hire 



^jcr^^tnaru ctntf ^tt^* 289 

out with a Siberian chain-gang. In the 
first place there was no such a thing as rest 
possible after the first glimmer of each day's 
dawn. Every rooster on the farm, and there 
were millions of them, was up "for keeps" 
long before sunrise. Their united chorus 
smote the skies. One might as well have 
tried to sleep through Gettysburg's battle. 
A score or so of bereaved cows lamented 
all night for their murdered babies, and a 
couple of donkeys, kept purely for orna- 
mental purposes, made sounds every half 
hour or so that turned my hair snow white 
with terror. After breakfast each day I used 
to walk down the hill and fish for pickerel 
in a river that had no current, and looked 
discouraged. "Walked," did I say? Nay, 
there was nothing so decorous as a walk 
possible down the slippery, stony descent 
which led to the haunts of the pickerel. 
When I didn't hurl myself down that hill, 
I slid down, and between the two methods 
I wrecked both musck and shoe leather. 
The latter part of the way led through a 
pasture devoted to several cows and a bull. 
As I am more afraid of the latter than of 
death and all his cohorts, my morning walks 
ended in heart failures and had to be aban- 

19 



290 ^0&etnav^ antf ^u^* 

doned. Occasionally I would take a book 
and go out and sit in my hammock. Then 
the large roosters, each one of them at least 
seven feet tall and highly ruffled about the 
legs, would come around and look at me, 
so that I would have to go into the house to 
hide my embarrassment. I know of noth- 
ing harder to endure than the stare of a 
Brahma fowl, especially if one is a bit nerv- 
ous and overworked. Nervous prostration 
has sprung from lighter causes. 

Nothing happened while I was at the 
farm but meal time, and the intervals were 
so long between those episodes that I used to 
wonder daily at my own mission subsequent 
to the farm-life as one gropes for pre-his- 
toric clues. There was a man about the 
premises who walked to and from the vil- 
lage twice a day with a large brown jug. 
When I asked at different times what he 
fetched in the jug, not because I wanted to 
know, but merely to find a topic of conver- 
sation, I was successively told that it was 
"kerosene," "maple molasses," "buttermilk," 
and "vinegar." I wish I knew if I was told 
the truth every time, or if somebody tried to 
impose upon me merely because I was town- 
bred. 



^00^marH antf glu^* 291 

Occasionally we took rides over stony- 
trails where boulders and ruts marked the 
way, and only the creaking of our bones 
broke the primeval silence. These rides 
were supposed to be part of the generous 
plan of contemplated rest, but a few more of 
them would have resulted in the rest from 
which there is no awaking. No, my dear, I 
am an ardent lover of the country, and I 
love it as the epicure loves a good dinner, or 
the musician loves music, but I will take it, 
please, without the accessories of a poorly- 
kept hoosier farm. I do not yearn for the 
defilements of a barn-yard that is never 
cleansed, nor for the frolicsomeness of pigs 
that wander at their own sweet will, nor for 
the clamor of aggressively alert poultry, nor 
for piscatorial delights. I love the country 
as God made it before greed and gain and 
all the abominations of man entered into 
and spoiled it. I love it clean and whole- 
some and sweet, as it was turned out of the 
workshop; its streams untainted, and their 
banks unbereft of beautiful trees; its hills 
still covered with verdure, and its winds un- 
contaminated with the scent of defiling 
drains and waterways. 



292 ^o&entuvvt anif $ltte. 



"^ 



I have seen him! Actually seen him! 
Shall I say the coming man? No, rather let 
us call him the vanished type, the stalwart, 
full-blooded, glorious "might have been" of 
nature. Not an exotic, but the indigenous 
growth of a soil fed by breeze and sun. No 
earmuffs about him; no cringing with- 
drawal into mufflers before the advance of 
winter blasts. No cowardly retreat into 
furry overcoats, mittens and gum shoes. 

"Amber," said a fellow traveler the other 
day, "yonder is a man after your own heart. 
He has not worn an overcoat or heavy- 
weight flannels for six years. He never but- 
tons up his coat save when it rains. What 
do you think of him?" 

"Think of him !" said I ; "were it not for 
a lingering regard for the conventionalities, 
I should walk right over to that man and 
say : 'Sir, I thank you for the sight of a man 
— not a human Hly bud! You have struck 
the right way of living, and you will be a 
hale and handsome man when the enfeebled 
race that surrounds you have toddled into 
the consumptive's grave or are sneezing 



^0&ttnavyi ctnlJr ^u^^ 293 

upon their catarrhal pilgrimage to the 
tomb." The man was worth looking at, hale 
and hearty, his chest like the convex curve 
of a barrel, his eye like a falcon's. 

"But," said my friend, "were I to throw 
aside my overcoat and go forth unprotected 
this freezing weather, the exposure would 
surely kill me!" 

"No doubt it would," was my cheerful 
reply. "There are always a host to die be- 
fore any reform is achieved or victory ac- 
complished. You have coddled yourself so 
long between blankets and absorbed red- 
hot furnace heat until you haven't the stam- 
ina of an aspen leaf. Take a hot-house 
flower out of doors and it soon wilts. But 
mark the beautiful Edelweiss of the Alps — it 
thrives in the pure breath of eternal snow." 
But what is the use of talking? Although 
my tongue became a golden bell and my 
pen a gleaming flame, I could never con- 
vince you, my dear old, shivery, shaky pub- 
lic, of the advantage of fresh air and plenty 
of it, and the advisability of a generous cul- 
tivation of nature and her free gifts. As 
well expect to be nourished by looking at 
your food through an opera glass as hope 
to be strong and stalwart upon a homeo- 



294 ^00^tnavyi ant^ |lw^* 

pathic allowance of pure air and sunshine, 
or in spite of the devices you plan to shut 
yourself away and hermetically seal your 
body, as it were, from the sweet, health- 
giving influence of sun and wind and frost. 
Just stop a moment before you turn away 
from this subject, my dear, and hear a little 
story. I know the subject is a bore and that 
I am a crank, but listen. Once there was a 
grand beneficent power — call it God if you 
will — who planned a spot wherein to place 
some atom which he had shaped out of dust 
and vivified with a spark of his own life. 
He looked about a little, we will imagine, 
and finally settled upon a garden wherein 
to place these precious pensioners on his 
care. A roofless, wall-less spot full of 
draughts and dew, breezes and blossoms. 
He filled it with birds and carpeted it with 
grass, set rivulets running through it for 
"water works" and sunbeams and starbeams 
for "electric light" plants, etc. That is all 
I have to say. Like the Mother Morey 
legend my story is done before it is scarcely 
begun. But ask yourself the question. Why 
didn't God put his well-beloved models of 
the forthcoming race into a more sheltered 
place if there was so much danger in fresh 



air, draughts and chilly weather? Why 
didn't he seal them up behind double win- 
dows in an airless, sunless, hot and unhealth- 
ful home where the dear things could keep 
warm? Because he was God and knew 
everything, and not man and knew nothing. 

I 

Well, the old ship Time has put into port 
again to take on a new cargo of good reso- 
lutions, earnest resolves and patented 
schemes, before setting sail for the shores 
of a distant future. Ten to one she goes to 
pieces on the breakers before ever sighting 
land again, and a hundred to ninety-nine 
her cargo is thrown overboard before she 
reaches mid-sea. The channel is narrow 
and the rocks lie thick as peas in a marrow- 
fat pod, and many more bales of choice mer- 
chandise find the bottoim of the sea each 
year than are ever delivered to the good 
angel consignee. "I am going to be the best 
girl in all the world," says the poor little 
Captain on New Year's eve. Behold! the 
hours have not swung around the diurnal 
circle before there is a wild onslaught from 
shadowland, and the brave captain is left 



296 ^0^^ntartj ttntf gluje* 

wounded on the field. Only a tender hand 
and tireless patience can set her on her feet 
again. 

"I will eschew debt as I would poison, and 
starve before I will commit an indiscretion," 
cries the Doctor as he sets sail for the untried 
sea. Within the first watch he hauls down 
his colors from the mast head, captured by 
a pirate extravagance. 

"I will be gentle of speech and courteous 
and sweet to all!" says the Young Person, 
and gayly steers for the open channel. Mid- 
way she encounters a rock of annoyance 
and the air is stormy with irritable words 
that fly and beat like stinging rain. Ah, 
well, my dear, thank the good Lord there 
are life-saving stations all along the shore, 
and no wreck was ever yet so hopeless but 
Infinite Love could set it afloat again. 



'There is just one person born who has a 
right to this thoroughfare, and that is I!" 
muses the woman with the umbrella as she 
walks the crowded streets on a rainy day. 
"I am in possession of that part of the uni- 
verse immediately contiguous to the spot on 



which I stand, and I shall make myself just 
as much of a nuisance as I choose. I shall 
jab out your eyes, and knock oflf your hat, 
and clip your ears, and stab your back with 
my umbrella tip just as often and as vio- 
lently as I choose. I shall run into you from 
behind, and bump into you, and knock you 
down if I so desire, and none shall say me 
nay. I am not very tall, but all the better 
for my plans if I am not. If I were of the 
same height as you I should not be able to 
take you under the hat-brim as I do, and 
jab you in the nostril as I pass. If I choose 
to cut criss-cross through a crowd, who shall 
forbid me, being a woman? I can be just 
as rude and just as mean as I want to be, 
and who is going to hinder, so long as I 
wear a gown and call myself a lady? If I 
were a man and manifested the reckless 
thirst for universal carnage that I do you 
would call the patrol and bear me away to 
the lock-up; but being a poor little, innocent 
woman I have it all my own way." 



I know a wife who is waiting, safe and 
sound in her father's home, for her young 



298 ^c&i^ntaxvi anlf ^rne* 

husband to earn the money single-handed 
to make a home worthy of her acceptance. 
She makes me think of the first mate of a 
ship who should stay on shore until the 
captain tested the ability of his vessel to 
weather the storm. Back to your ship, you 
cowardly one! If the boat goes down, go 
down with it, but do not count yourself 
worthy of any fair weather you did not help 
to gain! A woman who will do all she can 
to win a man's love merely for the profit his 
purse is going to be to her, and will desert 
him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman 
and carries a bad heart in her bosom. Why. 
you are never really wedded until you have 
had dark days together. What earthly pur- 
pose would a cable serve that never was 
tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie 
that binds wedded hearts together if like a 
filament of floss it parts when the strain is 
brought to bear upon it? It is not when you 
are young, my dear, when the skies are blue 
and every wayside weed flaunts a summer 
blossom, that the story of your life is record- 
ed. It is when "Darby and Joan" are faded 
and wasted and old, when poverty has 
nipped the roses, when trouble and want and 
care have flown like uncanny birds over 



Jla^^martj anb |lw^* 299 

their heads (but never yet nested in their 
hearts, thank God!), that the completed 
chronicle of their lives furnishes the record 
over which approving heaven smiles and 
weeps. 



* 



There is one thing I learn day by day in 
my strollings about town, and that is that 
nobody is going to give me dollar values for 
half-dollar equivalents. In these days when 
the best of folks go mad on bargains we 
seem to think it is an easy thing to get some- 
thing for nothing, but I have yet to see the 
day when we can. There are cheap restau- 
rants where they serve you roast turkey for 
a quarter, but don't fool yourself! It is not 
the same kind of bird they serve in a high- 
class place for a dollar. You look at your 
check when you come out from an eco- 
nomical kitchen with a feeling of glee that 
you have got so much for so little. But how 
about the flavor that lingers in your mouth? 
How about the display of pine toothpicks 
and spotted linen? How about the finger- 
marked drinking glasses and damp napkins? 
No, no; poor as I am I would rather pay 



300 Jloi&^ntar^ cttttf Jlu^* 

my dollar and get a dollar's worth of clean- 
liness and daintiness and flavor than save 
seventy-five cents and do without them. 
Sure as you live and sure as the world is 
operated on a self-accommodative basis, you 
never will get a first-water diamond with- 
out you pay first-water diamond equivalents. 







The other day there was a little girl, scarce 
1 6 years of age, who started away for the 
first time from home and mother. She was 
brave and gay in a new suit, new boots and 
a new hat with a feather the color of a lin- 
net's wing. She carried a bunch of the love- 
liest sweet peas at her dainty waist and on 
her face there played a sunburst of smiles. 
She had not been five hours in the place 
appointed her to visit when her mother re- 
ceived the following letter: 

"My Precious Mamma : I am writing this 
in my room before I am called to breakfast. 
None but God can know what I suffer ! Not 
until I am in your arms once more will you 
know what I am going through! If you 
love me let me come home. Don't tell any- 
one, but let me come if you love me ! Don't 



^00!Ctnaviii ctntr glu^* 30i 

send the shoes — I shall not need them — 
but let me come home! Think what I must 
suffer so far away from you. I shall sell my 
ring and buy a ticket if you do not telegraph 
that I may come !" 

And as I read the pathetic letter between 
my smiles and tears I thought to myself, is 
there anything on earth so hard to bear as 
homesickness — first homesickness, when the 
heart is new to sorrow? I would rather have 
any disease the laboratory of evil keeps in 
stock than one pang of what that little girl 
was suffering when she penciled that letter. 



m 



Around in a picture store on one of the 
avenues I chanced upon a painting that at- 
tracted not only myself, but a crowd of 
people from the street. It represented a 
lion's cage barred with heavy barriers of 
iron. On the floor of the den is the figure of 
a beautiful girl stretched in a deathlike 
swoon. There are orange blossoms in her 
hair, and the flush on her cheek has had no 
time to fade. Crouched by her side, one 
great paw on her breast and another at her 
waist, is a wrathful liori whose evident in- 



302 ^0&i^tnavi^ ttntf ^w^* 

tention is to tear his victim into bonbon 
fragments. I wish somebody would ex- 
plain that picture to me. I am tired con- 
jecturing how the bride strayed into the 
lion's quarters, and where her husband was 
that he shouldn't be taking better care of 
her, and why there was nobody on hand to 
help at this critical moment portrayed on the 
canvas. Young married women are not 
supposed to be visiting zoological gardens 
when they ought to be changing their white 
satin favors for their traveling gowns. The 
picture seems a puzzler to all who watch it, 
and as the crowd is great the confusion of 
wits is catching. 



THE TRYST. 

Where a woodland path, like a silver line, 

Winds by a woodland river, 
And half in shadow, and half in shine. 

The alders lean and shiver, 
Where a forest bird has built him a nest 

Low in the springing grasses, 
And all the day long, with her wings at rest, 

His mate the slow time passes; 

Where a flood of gold through the forest dim 
Tells when the noon is strongest. 



^0&etnavt^ anb ^u^* 303 

And a purple fringe on the forest's rim 
Proclaims when the shades are longest; 

Where the dawn is only known from the night 
By the birds that sing their sweetest, 

And the twilight hush from the morning light 
By the peace that is then completest; 

Where only the flood of silvery haze 

Shall tell that the moon is risen, 
When down from the sky, like a meteor blaze, 

Shall flutter her snow-white ribbon, — 
I will meet you there, my lady love sweet, 

When the weary world is sleeping, 
And the frets of the day, that tireless beat, 

Are hushed in the night's close keeping; 

Not missing the world — by the world un- 
missed — 

We two shall wander together. 
And whether we chided, or whether we kissed, 

There'll be none to forget or remember; 
And when at the last asleep you shall fall. 

By the shore of the musical river. 
Of the crimson leaves I will weave you a pall, 

And kiss you good-by, love, forever. 

But the stars up above, and the waters below. 

Shall sing of us, over and over; 
Of the tryst that we kept in the years long ago. 

In the woods by the beautiful river. 



